Abscissa had gone to Wheelborough to visit a school-friend. The aged maiden hoped I would make myself comfortable, and departed to the unknown haunts which knew Jocasta’s daily walk.
Comfortable! But I settled myself in a great uneasy chair, and waited with the contradictory spirit common to such junctures, dreading every step lest it should herald the man whom, of all men, I wished to see.
I had been there at least an hour and was growing right drowsy.
At length Professor Surd came in. He sat down in the dusk opposite me, and I thought his eyes glinted with malignant pleasure as he said, abruptly:
“So, young man, you think you are a fit husband for my girl?”
I stammered some inanity about making up in affection what I lacked in merit, about my expectations, family, and the like. He quickly interrupted me.
“You misapprehend me, sir. Your nature is destitute of those mathematical perceptions and acquirements which are the only sure foundations of character. You have no mathematics in you. You are fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils—Shakspere. Your narrow intellect cannot understand and appreciate a generous mind. There is all the difference between you and a Surd, if I may say it, which intervenes between an infinitesimal and an infinite. Why, I will even venture to say that you do not comprehend the Problem of the Couriers!”
I admitted that the Problem of the Couriers should be classed rather without my list of accomplishments than within it. I regretted this fault very deeply, and suggested amendment. I faintly hoped that my fortune would be such—
“Money!” he impatiently exclaimed. “Do you seek to bribe a Roman senator with a penny whistle? Why, boy, do you parade your paltry wealth, which, expressed in mills, will not cover ten decimal places, before the eyes of a man who measures the planets in their orbits, and close crowds infinity itself?”
I hastily disclaimed any intention of obtruding my foolish dollars, and he went on: