aving quitted the company of Miss
Hamm, I met Miss Primleigh. She suggested another excursion into the
wildwood. Upon plea of a slight indisposition, but without explaining
its symptoms, I excused myself and continued upon my way. I felt that I
should prefer for the nonce to be alone. I shall ever value my
friendship with Miss Primleigh as a great privilege, for in truth she is
one of deep culture and profound mental attainments, but during the last
few days I have several times detected myself in the act of wishing that
she were not quite so statistical in her point of view and that her
thoughts upon occasion might take a lighter trend than she evinces. I
have even found myself desiring that to the eye she might present a
plumper aspect, so to speak. For, in all charity, it is not to be denied
that Miss Primleigh is what the world is pleased to call
angular--painfully angular, I am afraid. Only to-day I noticed that her
feet were large, or at least the shoes she wore lent a suggestion as of
largeness. One owes it to oneself to make the best of one's personal
appearance; this reflection came to me as I was turning away from Miss
Primleigh. Possibly it is because she has failed to do so that I have
found her company, in a measure, palling upon me here of late. Or can it
be that spiritually I am outgrowing Miss Primleigh? I know not. I do but
state the actual fact. Yet always I shall esteem her most highly.

To-night a sense of loneliness, a desire for the companionship of my
kind, assails me. I can only opine that my blood is not thinning with
the desired celerity. Beginning to-morrow I shall take a large
tablespoonful of the tonic before meals instead of a dessert-spoonful.

A telephone was to-day installed in my study. Heretofore Fernbridge has
been connected with the outer world only by a single telephone placed in
the reception hall of our main building, but now, by Miss Waddleton's
direction, each member of the faculty will hereafter enjoy the use of a
separate instrument. Thus, without the surrender of any of its
traditions, does Fernbridge keep abreast of the movements of this
workaday world.

I think of nothing else of moment. I seek repose.

* * * * *

APRIL THE TWENTY-SECOND.--A most annoying incident has marred the day.
As I think back upon it, adding deduction to deduction, superimposing
surmise upon suspicion and suspicion in turn upon premise and fact, I am
forced, agains