“If you did not know what the Professor is, you might suppose, Kit, that he was overcome, and overwhelmed with the result of his own neglect and softness. Not a bit of it; in a week’s time, he had mended all his broken apparatus; and the only difference to be noticed was, that he never began work without locking the door. His treatment of his wife was the same as ever. He bore no ill-will, or at any rate showed none, on account of that strong explosion; and he took thenceforth all her fits of fury as gusts of wind, that had got in by mistake. It is impossible for any woman to make a man of that nature unhappy. He would have been happier, I dare say, and have done much more for the good of the world, if he had married a peaceful woman; but I know very little of those matters. Only, as you have an ordinary mind, be sure that you marry a sweet-tempered woman. To bed, my boy, to bed! We must be up right early.” CHAPTER XV. MORAL SUPPORT. IN spite of all said to the contrary, I believe that young people, upon the whole, are more apt to ponder than the old folk are. At least, if to ponder means—as it should—to weigh in the balance of pros and cons the probable results of their own doings. The old man remembers the time he has lost, in thinking thoughts that came to naught; and he sees that if they had come to much, that much would have been very little now. The young man has plenty of time on his hands, and believes he is going to do wonders with it, and makes a bright map of his mighty course in life. And this is the wisest thing that he can do. But when he falls in love, alas! his ripe wisdom is seldom applied to himself. Like a roguish grocer, with a magnet in his counter, he brings the scale down to his own liking; but he differs from him, in that he cheats himself. Being very wise in my own eyes, I pondered very carefully my next step; not with any thought of retiring, but with a firm resolve to advance in the strongest and most effective manner. My Uncle’s long story, instead of damping, had added hot fuel to my ardour, and compassion had lent a deeper tone to passion. Tender pictures arose before me of my angelic Kitty, starved, and tortured, and snubbed, and trampled, and (worst of all perhaps to a female body) shabbily, and grotesquely dressed. Such a woman as my uncle had described was enough to drive the largest-minded man to fury, and to grind the sweetest of her own sex, into fragments of misery and despair. The one crumb of comfort I could pick up, was that such cruelty must make my darling pine all the more for tender love, and long perpetually for some refuge, however humble it might be. But the point of all points was—how should I get at her?