Indeed I hoped that you would consent
to accept it for your own, as a--"
"No, I'll return it. I daresay you will find," he added with a faint
smile, but his grossest one, "that my notes have not lessened its value
exactly!"
In the hall Queed looked at his watch; ten minutes to ten. _Twenty-five
minutes to his visit upon the old professor!_
However, let us be calm and just about it. The twenty-five minutes was
not a flat loss: he had got Crozier by it. Crozier was worth twenty-five
minutes; thirty-five, if it came to that--fifty!... But how to fit such
a thing as this into the Schedule--and Klinker's visits--and the time he
had given to Fifi to-night and very likely would have to give through an
endless chain of to-morrows? Here was the burning crux. Was it endurable
that the Schedule must be corrupted yet again?
So far as little Fifi was concerned, it turned out that these agonies
were superfluous; he had helped her with her lessons for the last time.
She did not appear in the dining-room the next night, or the next, or
the next. Inquiries from the boarders drew from Mrs.
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