“Well,” said Allardyce, jocosely; “I’ll tell you a secret. I am the hard student of the family, and that’s much better than that my sister should be, I think. I don’t approve of girls working too hard. It makes them old--takes away their freshness--especially if they go in for mathematics. Do you know I have never been able to imagine a girl mathematician anyway,” he ran on, confidentially. “Always seemed like a sort of joke. Now there was that English girl--what was her name, who was worse than a senior wrangler? Her photographs were just everywhere. I was in Cambridge that summer and they were in all the shop-windows, and I would stop and look carefully to see if they were not different from the ones I had seen the day before. For they were quite pretty you know, and I was always hoping that there was some mistake and that they had got some other young woman, entirely innocent, mixed up with her.” There was so much genuine distress in his tone that Miss Brent made an heroic attempt not to laugh. “Well,” she exclaimed, “don’t say that--some people think I am good at mathematics myself.” Allardyce shook his head at her. “I’m sure it’s a mistake--you are trying to impose on me,” he said, with mock severity. “At any rate I am glad my sister is guiltless of any such accusation. We are under the impression that she goes in for a good time at college--at least one would suppose so from her letters. I got one from her just before I left Paris in which she gave me a very amusing account of some blow-out here--some class function or other, and she seemed dreadfully afraid that the faculty would get hold of the details. She says you stand tremendously in awe of your faculty. Wait a minute--I’ve got the letter here somewhere,” he went on, fumbling in his pockets. “Didn’t think much of the affair considered in the light of a scrape, but she seemed to think it exciting and dangerous to the last degree. That’s where you girls are so funny--you think you are doing something immensely wrong and it is just nothing at all. I see I haven’t the letter with me; but perhaps you were in it all and know a great deal more about it than I do.” Miss Brent suddenly twisted herself around in the boat, and reached for an especially big lily. “No--” she said, “I--I don’t think I was there. Will you pull a little on the left oar--a little more, please. It’s that lily I want!”