"Mathematics only lasts half an hour. But then I have an hour of study in mental philosophy before breakfast. We breakfast at nine."
"It must take a great deal of coffee to wash down all that," said the doctor, lazily trimming his sweetbriar. "Don't you find that you are very hungry when you come to breakfast?"
"No, not generally," I said.
"How is that? where there is so much sharpening of the wits, people ought to be sharp otherwise."
"My wits do not get sharpened," I said, half laughing. "I think they get dull; and I am often dull altogether by breakfast time."
"What time in the day do you walk?"
"In the afternoon, when we have done with the schoolroom. But lately Miss Pinshon does not walk much."
"So you take the best of the day for philosophy?"
"No, sir, for mathematics."