Then the Professor came in without his glasses. He could never see much without them. He called out to me, as though I had never left the house, "Go and hunt for my spectacles, Dumps." Away I went, and of course I found them and brought them to him. He put them on his nose, and his eyes fell on Von Marlo. "Is that you, Von Marlo?" he said. "Sit down, my dear fellow, and have some supper.--Alex, help Von Marlo to whatever there is." He pulled the contents of the hot dish towards himself and began to eat ravenously. There was not even a welcome for me. He had evidently quite forgotten that I had been away. After a time I said, "Father, I have come back." "Eh?" said the Professor. "By-the-bye, Von Marlo, did you notice the grand passage you and the other fellows were construing this afternoon? There was a fellow in the form inclined to mock at the magnificent words, but that could not have been you." "Oh no, sir," replied Von Marlo. "Father, I have come back," I repeated. "I have come back from Miss Grace Donnithorne's." "Ah!" he said. The fact that I had come back did not move him, but the words "Miss Grace Donnithorne" seemed to rouse him, for he got up, came straight towards me, and put a hand on my right shoulder and a hand on my left, and drew me towards him. "How is Grace Donnithorne?" he said. "She seems quite well, father." "Then that is all right." "Aren't you glad I am back?" I said. The Professor returned to his seat. "Alex, I shall be obliged to stay up until the small hours. That paper for the Royal Society must be finished to-night. I shall send it to be typed the first thing in the morning. You must get up half-an-hour earlier than usual, and come to my room for copy, and take it to the typewriting office in Chancery Lane." Not a word about me. I felt a sense of pain at the back of my eyes. What was the good of having a learned Professor for a father when he hardly noticed you? I had been so hoping that my pretty dress would be seen and admired in the home circle. I went to bed that night in my comfortless and hideous room. It was so cold that I could not sleep for some time, and as I pressed and pressed the bedclothes round me I could not help thinking of the jolly life some girls had, and even a few tears rolled down my cheeks. To be very ugly, to be in no way endowed with any special talent, and to have a great father who simply forgot your existence, was not the most enviable lot in all the world for a girl. "If only mother had lived!" I could not help saying to myself. Then in my dreams mother seemed to come to me; she took me in her arms and kissed me and called me her little darling; and when she did this it seemed to me that looks mattered nothing and love mattered everything. I was her child; I was with her; she was all my own.