"

The landlady looked round suspiciously, as if to make sure the cat was
not listening, "I will not deceive you, gentlemen," she said. "It _do_
scratch, but not without you pulls its whiskers! It'll never do it," she
repeated slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words of some
written agreement between herself and the cat, "without you pulls its
whiskers!"

"Much may be excused in a cat so treated," said Balbus, as they left the
house and crossed to Number Seventy-three, leaving the landlady
curtseying on the doorstep, and still murmuring to herself her parting
words, as if they were a form of blessing, "---- not without you pulls
its whiskers!"

At Number Seventy-three they found only a small shy girl to show the
house, who said "yes'm" in answer to all questions.

"The usual room," said Balbus, as they marched in: "the usual
back-garden, the usual cabbages. I suppose you can't get them good at
the shops?"

"Yes'm," said the girl.

"Well, you may tell your mistress we will take the room, and that her
plan of growing her own cabbages is simply _admirable_!"

"Yes'm," said the girl, as she showed them out.

"One day-room and three bed-rooms," said Balbus, as they returned to the
hotel. "We will take as our day-room the one that gives us the least
walking to do to get to it."

"Must we walk from door to door, and count the steps?" said Lambert.

"No, no! Figure it out, my boys, figure it out!" Balbus gaily exclaimed,
as he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless pupils, and left the
room.

"I say! It'll be a job!" said Hugh.

"Rather!" said Lambert.

KNOT III.

MAD MATHESIS.

"I waited for the train."

"Well, they call me so because I _am_ a little mad, I suppose," she
said, good-humouredly, in answer to Clara's cautiously-worded question
as to how she came by so strange a nick-name. "You see, I never do what
sane people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains,
(talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station--I've
something to tell you about _that_), and I never play lawn-tennis. I
can't cook an omelette. I can't even set a broken limb! _There's_ an
ignoramus for you!"

Clara was her niece, and full twenty years her junior; in fact, she was
still attending a High School--an institution of which Mad Mathesis
spoke with undisguised aversion. "Let a woman be meek and lowly!" she
would say. "None of your High Schools for me!" But it was vaca