e had spoken without any intention
of speaking, and had volunteered a piece of information which had
certainly not been asked. It was very well, being but nineteen years
old; but she was oddly conscious that if she had been forty she should
have said so in just the same absent-minded way, at that moment.

"Nineteen and six are twenty-five, aren't they?" asked Mrs. Bowring
suddenly.

"Yes, I believe so," answered the young man, with a laugh, but a good
deal surprised in his turn, for the question seemed irrelevant and
absurd in the extreme. "But I'm not good at sums," he added. "I was an
awful idiot at school. They used to call me Log. That was short for
logarithm, you know, because I was such a log at arithmetic. A fellow
gave me the nickname one day. It wasn't very funny, so I punched his
head. But the name stuck to me. Awfully appropriate, anyhow, as it
turned out."

"Did you punch his head because it wasn't funny?" asked Clare, glad of
the turn in the conversation.

"Oh--I don't know--on general principles. He was a diabolically clever
little chap, though he wasn't very witty. He came out Senior Wrangler at
Cambridge. I heard he had gone mad last year. Lots of those clever chaps
do, you know. Or else they turn parsons and take pupils for a living.
I'd much rather be stupid, myself. There's more to live for, when you
don't know everything. Don't you think so?"

Both women laughed, and felt that the man was tactful. They were also
both reflecting, of themselves and of each other, that they were not
generally silly women, and they wondered how they had both managed to
say such foolish things, speaking out irrelevantly what was passing in
their minds.

"I think I shall go for a walk," said Brook, rising rather abruptly.
"I'll go up the hill for a change. Thanks awfully. Good-bye!"

He lifted his hat and went off towards the hotel. Mrs. Bowring looked
after him, but Clare leaned back in her seat and opened a book she had
with her. The colour rose and fell in her cheeks, and she kept her eyes
resolutely bent down.

"What a nice fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring when the young man was out
of hearing. "I wonder who he is."

"What difference can it make, what his name is?" asked Clare, still
looking down.

"What is the matter with you, child?" Mrs. Bowring asked. "You talk so
strangely to-day!"

"So do you, mother. Fancy asking him whether nineteen and six are
twenty-five!"

"For that matter, my dear, I thought