"Dull!" repeated Arbuthnot. "Yes; I think you might call it dull. The people who kindly condescend to notice me in the winter have gone away, and my dress-coat is packed in camphor. I have ceased to be useful; and, even if Fate had permitted me to be ornamental, where should I air my charms? There seems really no reason why I should exist, until next winter, when I may be useful again, and receive in return my modicum of entertainment. To be merely a superior young man in a department is not remunerative in summer, as one ceases to glean the results of one's superiority. At present I might as well be inferior, and neither dance, nor talk, nor sing, and be utterly incapacitated by nature for either carrying wraps or picking up handkerchiefs; and you cannot disport yourself at the watering-places of the rich and great on a salary of a hundred dollars a month; and you could only get your sordid 'month's leave,' if such a thing were possible." "I--have been dull myself," said Tredennis, hesitantly. "If it should ever occur to you to drop in and see a fellow-sufferer," said Arbuthnot, "it would relieve the monotony of _my_ lot, at least, and might awaken in me some generous emotions." Tredennis looked up at him. "It never has occurred to you so far, I see," was Arbuthnot's light reply to the look; "but, if it should, don't resist the impulse. I can assure you it is a laudable one. And my humble apartment has the advantage of comparative coolness." When Tredennis entered the library he found the professor sitting in his usual summer seat, near the window. A newspaper lay open on his knee, but he was not reading it; he seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a reverie of a rather puzzling kind. "Did you meet any one as you came in?" he asked of Tredennis, as soon as they had exchanged greetings. "I met Mr. Arbuthnot," Tredennis answered, "and stopped a few moments on the steps to talk to him." "He has been entertaining me for the last hour," said the professor, taking off his glasses and beginning to polish them. "Now, will you tell me," he asked, with his quiet air of reflective inquiry into an interesting subject,--"will you tell me why he comes to entertain _me_?" "He gave me the impression," answered Tredennis, "that his object in coming was that you might entertain him, and he added that you were very good to him, and he appeared to have enjoyed his call very much."