was very unusual, for him: but just then he seemed, I fancied, a little exhausted. In fact, he climbed up into Sylvie’s lap as he spoke, and rested his head against her shoulder. ‘What a many verses it was!’ he whispered.
Chapter 12
A Musical Gardener
The Other Professor regarded him with some anxiety. ‘The smaller animal ought to go to bed at once,’ he said with an air of authority.
‘Why at once?’ said the Professor.
‘Because he ca’n’t go at twice,’ said the Other Professor.
The Professor gently clapped his hands. ‘Isn’t he wonderful!’ he said to Sylvie. ‘Nobody else could have thought of the reason, so quick. Why, of course he ca’n’t go at twice! It would hurt him to be divided.’
This remark woke up Bruno, suddenly and completely. ‘I don’t want to be divided,’ he said decisively.
‘It does very well on a diagram,’ said the Other Professor. ‘I could show it you in a minute, only the chalk’s a little blunt.’
‘Take care!’ Sylvie anxiously exclaimed, as he began, rather clumsily, to point it. ‘You’ll cut your finger off, if you hold the knife so!’
‘If oo cuts it off, will oo give it to me, please?’ Bruno thoughtfully added.
‘It’s like this,’ said the Other Professor, hastily drawing a long line upon the black board, and marking the letters ‘A,’ ‘B,’ at the two ends, and ‘C’ in the middle: ‘let me explain it to you. If AB were to be divided into two parts at C—’
‘It would be drownded,’ Bruno pronounced confidently.
The Other Professor gasped. ‘What would be drownded?’
‘Why the bumble-bee, of course!’ said Bruno. ‘And the two bits would sink down in the sea!’
Here the Professor interfered, as the Other Professor was evidently too much puzzled to go on with his diagram.
‘When I said it would hurt him, I was merely referring to the action of the nerves—’
The Other Professor brightened up in a moment. ‘The action of the nerves,’ he began eagerly, ‘is curiously slow in some people. I had a friend, once, that, if you burnt him with a red-hot poker, it would take years and years before he felt it!’
‘And if you only pinched him?’ queried Sylvie.
‘Then it would take ever so much longer, of course. In fact, I doubt if the man himself would ever feel it, at all. His grandchildren might.’
‘I wouldn’t like to be the grandchild of a pinched grandfather, would you, Mister Sir?’ Bruno whispered. ‘It might come just when you wanted to be happy!’
That would be awkward, I admitted, taking it quite as a matter of course that he had so suddenly caught sight of me. ‘But don’t you always want to be happy, Bruno?’
‘Not always,’ Bruno said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes, when I’s too happy, I wants to be a little miserable. Then I just tell Sylvie about it, oo know, and Sylvie sets me some lessons. Then it’s all right.’
‘I’m sorry you don’t like lessons,’ I said. ‘You should copy Sylvie. She’s always as busy as the day is long!’
‘Well, so am I!’ said Bruno.
‘No, no!’ Sylvie corrected him. ‘You’re as busy as the day is short!’
‘Well, what’s the difference?’ Bruno asked. ‘Mister Sir, isn’t the day as short as it’s long? I mean, isn’t it the same length?’
Never having considered the question in this light, I suggested that they had better ask the Professor; and they ran off in a moment to appeal to their old friend. The Professor left off polishing his spectacles to consider. ‘My dears,’ he said after a minute, ‘the day is the same length as anything that is the same length as it.’ And he resumed his never-ending task of polishing.
The children returned, slowly and thoughtfully, to report his answer. ‘Isn’t he wise?’ Sylvie asked in an awestruck whisper. ‘If I was as wise as that, I should have a head-ache day long. I know I should!’
‘You appear to be talking to somebody—that isn’t here,’ the Professor said, turning round to the children. ‘Who is it?’
Bruno looked puzzled. ‘I never talks to nobody when he isn’t here!’ he replied. ‘It isn’t good manners. Oo should always wait till he comes, before oo talks to him!’
The Professor looked anxiously in my direction, and seemed to look through and through me without seeing me. ‘Then who are you talking to?’ he said. ‘There isn’t anybody here, you know, except the Other Professor—and he isn’t here!’ he added wildly, turning round and round like a teetotum. ‘Children! Help to look for him! Quick! He’s got lost again!’
The children were on their feet in a moment.
‘Where shall we look?’ said Sylvie.
‘Anywhere!’ shouted the excited Professor. ‘Only be quick about it!’ And he began trotting round and round the room, lifting up the chairs, and shaking them.
Bruno took a very small book out of the bookcase, opened it, and shook it in imitation of the Professor. ‘He isn’t here,’ he said.
‘He ca’n’t be there, Bruno!’ Sylvie said indignantly.
‘Course he ca’n’t!’ said Bruno. ‘I should have shooked him out, if he’d been in there!’
‘Has he ever been lost before?’ Sylvie enquired, turning up a corner of the hearth-rug, and peeping under it.
‘Once before,’ said the Professor: ‘he once lost himself in a wood—’
‘And couldn’t he find his-self again?’ said Bruno. ‘Why didn’t he shout? He’d be sure to hear his-self, ’cause he couldn’t be far off, oo know.’
‘Let’s try shouting,’ said the Professor.
‘What shall we shout?’ said Sylvie.
‘On second thoughts, don’t shout,’ the Professor replied. ‘The Vice-Warden might hear you. He’s getting awfully strict!’
This reminded the poor children of all the troubles, about which they had come to their old friend. Bruno sat down on the floor and began crying. ‘He is so cruel!’ he sobbed. ‘And
