u
suggest?"

The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I
would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures
would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the
repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in
his "Anatomy" speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He
also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a
noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her
back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss
Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.

"He also recommends--whether for this complaint, or for something
similar I forget for the moment--" said I, "anointing the soles of the
feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog;
and speaks highly of a ram's lungs applied hot to the fore part of the
head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a
rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our
forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at
the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the
past."

"But what about Carlotta?" inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.

That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to
talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.

"Send Carlotta up to me," I said, resignedly.

Another morning's work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just
transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli
about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth
century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted
with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt
epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point,
when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the
platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.

Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair,
her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her
back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than
ever in the enormity of the offence.

"Do you know what you're here for?" I asked, magisterially.

She nodded.

"Then you _have_ been making love to the young man from the grocer's?"

She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the