r." Number Five did not press the matter further.
So the young Tutor and Number Five read together pretty regularly, and
came to depend upon their meeting over a book as one of their stated
seasons of enjoyment. He is so many years younger than she is that I
do not suppose he will have to pass par la, as most of her male friends
have done. I tell her sometimes that she reminds me of my Alma Mater,
always young, always fresh in her attractions, with her scholars all
round her, many of them graduates, or to graduate sooner or later.

What do I mean by graduates? Why, that they have made love to her, and
would be entitled to her diploma, if she gave a parchment to each one
of them who had had the courage to face the inevitable. About the
Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. Who wrote that "I Like You
and I Love You," which we found in the sugar-bowl the other day? Was
it a graduate who had felt the "icy dagger," or only a candidate for
graduation who was afraid of it? So completely does she subjugate those
who come under her influence that I believe she looks upon it as a
matter of course that the fateful question will certainly come, often
after a brief acquaintance. She confessed as much to me, who am in her
confidence, and not a candidate for graduation from her academy. Her
graduates--her lambs I called them--are commonly faithful to her, and
though now and then one may have gone off and sulked in solitude, most
of them feel kindly to her, and to those who have shared the common fate
of her suitors. I do really believe that some of them would be glad to
see her captured by any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her.
She is the best of friends, they say, but can she love anybody, as so
many other women do, or seem to? Why shouldn't our Musician, who is
evidently fond of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, steal
her heart as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and bright Mrs. Thrale,
as so many music-teachers have run away with their pupils' hearts? At
present she seems to be getting along very placidly and contentedly with
her young friend the Tutor. There is something quite charming in their
relations with each other. He knows many things she does not, for he is
reckoned one of the most learned in his literary specialty of all the
young men of his time; and it can be a question of only a few years when
some first-class professorship will be offered him. She, on the other
hand, has so much more ex