He denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the ploughed land which environed them.
‘He kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather, my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. After the first thirty or forty years, nobody ever asked for it. One day I saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, I took it and came up. I stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, and that night I resolved to be an astronomer. I came back here from school several months ago, and I mean to be an astronomer still.’
He lowered his voice, and added:
‘I aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of Astronomer Royal, if I live. Perhaps I shall not live.’
‘I don’t see why you should suppose that,’ said she. ‘How long are you going to make this your observatory?’
‘About a year longer—till I have obtained a practical familiarity with the heavens. Ah, if I only had a good equatorial!’
‘What is that?’
‘A proper instrument for my pursuit. But time is short, and science is infinite,—how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,—and perhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark.’
She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. Perhaps it was owing to the nature of his studies.
‘You are often on this tower alone at night?’ she said.