“I won’t.”
“He only said that about partridges in January, I find, because he happened to see one of my letters in Jellybrand’s window. He doesn’t associate that letter with me. So it ought to be all right, and I’ve arranged my campaign.”
“But what can I—?”
She smiled at him with some Scottish craft.
“Don’t bother. You’ve got to be my aide-de-camp, that’s all. Ah, here we are!”
For at this moment the horse, with a great effort succeeded in falling down, for the last time, before the astronomer’s door.
CHAPTER XII
THE ELABORATE MIND OF MISS MINERVA
On being shown, by an elderly housekeeper with a Berlin wool fringe, into an old-fashioned oval book-room, Lady Enid and the Prophet discovered the astronomer sitting there tete-a-tete with a muffin, which lay on a china plate surrounded by manuscripts, letters, pamphlets, books and blotting-paper. He was engaged in tracing lines upon an immense sheet of foolscap with the aid of a ruler and a pair of compasses, and when he perceived his visitors, he merely rolled his glassy eyes at them, shook his large head as if in rebuke, and then returned to his occupation without uttering a word.