"That will suit me exactly, pa," cried Pet, clapping her hands with glee; "because then I can get your breakfast, dinner, and supper, and do all the housework, without any interruption in my studies." "Miss Pillbody thought the arrangement would suit you. She is a perfectly competent teacher of French, Italian, the English branches, music, drawing, the dead languages, and higher mathematics--quite a prodigy, I assure you, for a lady not yet twenty-two years old." (Marcus was addressing the father.) "I have been particular in my inquiries, and all who know her speak in the highest terms of her remarkable attainments, her ability to teach others, and her goodness of heart. Your daughter will like her, without doubt." "I know I shall," said Pet, with enthusiasm. "There are so many things that I will learn, pa. First, music--" "She has a fine piano, and plays splendidly," remarked the guest. "I heard her." "And French and Italian, to please you, pa--that is, if I can learn them--and everything else that the lady will teach me. I shall be so happy, sir." The father and the guest smiled at the zeal with which this young beginner proposed to grapple with the difficulties of human knowledge. It was fortunate for her that a long series of hard and injudicious teachers had not already sickened her of learning, and that she brought a fresh and uncorrupted taste to the work. Pet was thinking which one of her two dresses (equally faded) she should wear to school, and what bit of ribbon or trimming she could introduce in her old bonnet, to improve its general effect. Marcus Wilkeson was marvelling at the confidence which the inventor and his daughter placed in him, and at what there was about him to inspire it. Mr. Minford was congratulating himself on having met with a man so generous and sincere as this Mr. Wilkeson, and so entirely disinterested, too: "For," reasoned the inventor, "he cannot appreciate, as I do, the enormous value of my discovery, and does not dream that his portion of it will compensate him for his outlay more than a hundred times over." The silence was broken by a sound as of heavy boots trying to move softly on the stairs, and a subsequent modest rap at the door. CHAPTER III. AN AUXILIARY OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. The boy Bog rapped, and entered. He was more neatly dressed than when Marcus saw him on the occasion of his first visit. His patched and threadbare coat was replaced by a neat roundabout jacket; his greasy, visorless cap, by a flat felt hat, of which the brim was symmetrically turned up; his tattered shoes by great cowhide boots. The boy was of that age when the human frame grows with vegetable-like rapidity; and he seemed to hare increased a little all around within three weeks. The boy looked distressingly awkward in his new articles of attire. Had he stolen them, he could not have appeared more guilty in presence of the rightful owner.