If the ceiling had tumbled down over his head, Grover could not have been more astonished. It was a fact, he had been almost a daily visitor in the Professor’s house; he had very likely, in unguarded moments, in order to practice his imperfect German, made complimentary speeches to the three young ladies, individually and collectively; and in all probability he had, from a German point of view, given the Frau Professorin the right to talk to him as she did. And yet, to submit readily to the consequences of his rash conduct did not for a moment occur to him. His instinct bade him rather resort to a stratagem, which, as he concluded, the dire necessity would justify.
“Frau Professorin,” he began solemnly, “I need scarcely assure you that I feel greatly honored by what you have told me. But the fact is, I am not free. I am engaged.”
“Engaged!” cried the Frau Professorin, starting forward in her chair. “Why, then, did you not tell me that?”
“It is a secret engagement.”
“A secret engagement! And do your parents know of it?”
“They do not.”
“And the lady’s name?”
“Miss—Miss—Jones.”
Grover had no genius for mendacity and he was already beginning to repent of his daring fiction. But Mrs. Bornholm, suddenly possessed with some luminous idea, proceeded mercilessly in her cross-examination, feeling that her position, as the wronged party, gave her a right to trample upon conventionalities.
“Is this Miss Jones musical?” she queried eagerly.