Time has run on a little bit since the professor suffered many agonies on a certain raw February morning, and now it is the 30th of May, and a glorious finish too to that sweet month. Even into this dingy old room, where at a dingy old table the professor sits buried in piles of notes, and with sheets of manuscript knee-deep scattered around him, the warm glad sun is stealing; here and there, the little rays are darting, lighting up a dusty corner here, a hidden heap of books there. It is, as yet, early in the afternoon, and the riotous beams, who are no respecter of persons, and who honor the righteous and the ungodly alike, are playing merrily in this sombre chamber, given so entirely up to science and its prosy ways, daring even now to dance lightly on the professor's head, which has begun to grow a little bald. "The golden sun, in splendor likest heav'n," is proving perhaps a little too much for the tired brain in the small room. Either that, or the incessant noises in the street outside, which have now been enriched by the strains of a broken-down street piano, causes him to lay aside his pen and lean back in a weary attitude in his chair. What a day it is! How warm! An hour ago he had delivered a brilliant lecture on the everlasting Mammoth (a fresh specimen just arrived from Siberia), and is now paying the penalty of greatness. He had done well--he knew that--he had been _interesting_, that surest road to public favor--he had been applauded to the echo; and now, worn out, tired in mind and body, he is living over again his honest joy in his success. In this life, however, it is not given us to be happy for long. A knock at the professor's door brings him back to the present, and the knowledge that the landlady--a stout, somewhat erratic person of fifty--is standing on his threshold, a letter in her hand. "For you, me dear," says she, very kindly, handing the letter to the professor. She is perhaps the one person of his acquaintance who has been able to see through the professor's gravity and find him _young_. "Thank you," says he. He takes the letter indifferently, opens it languidly, and----Well, there isn't much languor after the perusal of it. The professor sits up; literally this time slang is unknown to him; and re-reads it. _That girl has come!_ There can't be any doubt of it. He had almost forgotten her existence during these past tranquil months, when no word or hint about her reached him, but now, _here_ she is at last, descending upon him like a whirlwind. A line in a stiff, uncompromising hand apprises the professor of the unwelcome fact. The "line" is signed by "Jane Majendie," therefore there can be no doubt of the genuineness of the news contained in it. Yes! that girl _has_ come! The professor never swears, or he might now perhaps have given way to reprehensible words.