President Currier, of the collegiate institute, had a daughter, Miss Nellie, who wanted to study Latin more than anything else in the world. President Currier particularly disliked conjugations and parsings and everything else pertaining to the study of language; and so it happened that as Miss Nellie was quite a good-looking and agreeable damsel, our young friend Pagebrook volunteered to give her the coveted instruction in her favorite study in the shape of afternoon lessons. The tutor soon discovered that his pupil's earnest wish to learn Latin had been based--as such desires frequently are in the case of young women--upon an entire misapprehension of the nature and difficulty of the study. In fact, Miss Nellie's clearest idea upon the subject of Latin before beginning it was that "it must be so nice!" Her progress, therefore, after the first week or two, was certainly not remarkable for its rapidity; but the tutor persisted. After awhile the young lady said "Latin wasn't nice at all," a remark which she made haste to qualify by assuring her teacher that "it's nice to take lessons in it, though." Finally Miss Nellie ceased to make any pretense of learning the lessons, but somehow the afternoon _seances_ over the grammar were continued, though it must be confessed that the talk was not largely of verbs. By the time commencement day came the occasional presence of Miss Nellie had become a sort of necessity in the young professor's daily existence, and the desire to be with her led him to spend the summer at Cape May, whither her father annually took her for the season. Now Cape May is an expensive place, as watering places usually are, and so Mr. Robert Pagebrook's stay of a little over two months there made a serious reduction in his reserve fund, which was at best a very limited one. Before going to Cape May he had concluded that he was in love with Miss Nellie, and had informed her of the fact. She had expressed, by manner rather than by spoken word, a reasonable degree of pleasure in the knowledge of this fact; but when pressed for a reply to the young gentleman's impetuous questionings, she had prettily avoided committing herself beyond recall. She told him she might possibly come to love him a little after awhile, in a pretty little maidenly way, which satisfied him that she loved him a good deal already. She said she "didn't know" with a tone and manner which convinced him that she did know; and so the Cape May season passed off very pleasantly, with just enough of uncertainty about the position of affairs to keep up an interest in them.