"I believe you’re not alone. They say that failing has descended to all the daughters of Mother Eve. How long are you to be here?" I asked. "Ages, I’m afraid," said Miss Kendrick. "Six months at least--maybe a year." "Then I can hope for the pleasure of seeing you sometimes?" I said. "I don’t know," she answered, appealing to a bust of Homer on a book-shelf. "Do you think a man with such an uncertain memory could be trusted to keep it in mind that such a person is here?" "I can vouch for him," I said. "If you’re quite sure--" she said. "Quite sure," I repeated positively. "Then you can be told that we are at home on Thursdays. There--I hear uncle showing that comical General Wilson out the door, so I’ll be getting my book and go. It was uncle you came to see, I believe." "It was Mr. Kendrick I called for, but--" "You needn’t go on," interrupted Miss Kendrick calmly. "I suppose you think it is only a white one, but I’d rather not hear it. Now if you wouldn’t mind reaching that fourth book from the end of the second row from the top, you’ll save me from the mortification of climbing on a chair." "This one?" "Yes, please," she said. "Thank you. Good night. I really don’t see why I’ve talked so much." "It was very good of you," I protested. "Good night." The swish of her skirts had hardly died away when the opposite door--the one by which I had entered--opened, and Wharton Kendrick walked in. "Come this way, Wilson. I can put my hand on the book in one second." "You can’t find your citation, Kendrick--it isn’t there," said a short, stout, red-faced man, with short yellow-gray side-whiskers, as he bustled in the wake of my client. "I tell you you can’t find it. I know the whole thing from cover to cover. Just give me the first line of any page and I’ll repeat it right to the bottom. I never have to read a thing more than once and I can carry it on the tip of my tongue for years afterward. Lord bless us, whom have we here?" "Oh, Hampden," said Kendrick. "I didn’t see you. General Wilson, allow me to introduce you." And the magnate gave me a kind word of identification. "A lawyer?" exclaimed General Wilson, his red face beaming in the frame of his yellow-gray side-whiskers. "Young man, you are entering on the greatest and noblest profession that the human mind has devised. You are following the most elevated and grandest principles that the wit of mankind is capable of evolving from the truths of the ages. I am a humble follower of the profession myself, and am proud to take you by the hand." He was not proud enough to make the most of the honor, for he gave but a perfunctory grasp as I made some appropriate reply.