After dinner, when they retired to the library together, it occurred to Tredennis that the professor was bestowing some thought upon his paternal position, and his first observation proved that this was the case. "It is a most wonderful thing that a few brief years should make such changes," he said. "It seems impossible that so short a time should change a small and exceedingly red infant into a young person returned from school in the most complete condition, and ready to 'come out.' She was not interesting as an infant. I tried to find her so, but failed, though it was insisted that she was an unusually intelligent baby, and I have not seen much of her of late years. When she was growing it was thought that the climate of Washington was not good for her. I am really a little curious about her. My views of girls are extremely undefined. I have always been a bookworm. I have not known girls. They have not come within my radius. I remember one I once knew years ago, but that is all. It was when I was a younger man. I think she was a year or so older than Bertha. She was very interesting--as a study. She used to bewilder me." He walked over to the table, and began to turn over some papers. "She had gray eyes," he said, in a rather lower voice,--"gray eyes." He was so quiet for some time that Tredennis thought he had forgotten what he had been talking about; but, after a pause of at least three minutes, he spoke again. "I would not be at all sorry," he said, "if Bertha was a little like her. I suppose," he added,--referring seriously to Tredennis,--"I suppose they are all more or less alike." "I think"--faltered Tredennis, "perhaps so." He did not feel himself an authority. The professor stood still a moment, regarding the fire abstractly. "_She_ had gray eyes," he said again,--"gray eyes!" and immediately afterward returned to his table, seated himself, and fell to work. The next week Bertha arrived, and to her distant relative her arrival was a revelation. She descended upon the quiet household--with her trunks, her delight in their contents, her anticipation of her first season, her fresh and rather surprised exultation in her own small powers and charms, which were just revealing themselves to her--like a young whirlwind. Her mother awakened to a most maternal interest in the gayeties into which she was to be drawn; the very servants were absorbed in the all-pervading excitement, which at length penetrated to the professor's study itself, and aroused him from his entomological reveries. After she had been in the house a week, he began to examine the girl through his spectacles with great care and deliberation, and, having cheerfully submitted to this inspection through several meals, one day at dinner its object expressed herself with charming directness concerning it. "I do hope you'll like me, papa," she said, "when you have classified me." "Classified you!" said the professor, in some bewilderment.