THE PROFESSOR.

By Clarence Cook.

The Professor seated himself at the luncheon-table with an air of importance. He was twelve years old, but he might have been taken for six, or even for three, he looked so wise. The children’s nurse poured herself out a cup of tea. The teapot was too full, and a large drop fell upon the shining mahogany table. The Professor looked at the drop with evident pleasure.

“Stop, nurse!” he cried, as she was about to wipe it up with her napkin. “Let’s see who can take up that tea without touching it, and leave the table dry!”

“Thuck it up,” said Pip.

“Mamma doesn’t like you to drink tea,” said nurse.

“Besides, that would be touching it,” said Tom.

“Take it up with a thpoon,” said Pip.

“You couldn’t do it; it would spread all over,” said the Professor.

“And that would be touching it just as much,” said Bob.

“Don’t fink it can be done!” said Pip, shaking her head.

“All shut your eyes,” said the Professor. “You, nurse, shut yours, too. Don’t any of you look.”

Nurse shut both her eyes, hard. Pip put her two fat little fists into her eyes, and listened. Tom laid his head down sideways on the table, and curled his arms round it. Bob declared that he wouldn’t shut his eyes; he was going to see that the Professor acted fair.

“Now open your eyes,” said the Professor.

They all looked up, and there stood the sage, who had covered the drop with a little blue bowl. He lifted the bowl, and, on the spot where had been the drop of tea, stood a lump of loaf-sugar holding up the tea in its paws, or pores, whichever you please.

Nurse picked up the lump of sugar and ate it. The table was as dry as a bone.

“Oh, my!” said Pip.

The Professor walked over to the window.

“Oh, nurse!” said he, “why don’t you make Bridget wash this paint off the glass?”

“She has tried to get it off,” said nurse, “but she can’t do it.”

“What loths of little thpots!” said Pip.

“What careless fellows those painters were!” said Tom.

“Who knows how to get it off?” said the Professor.

“Take a thpunge and thum thope,” said Pip.

“’T wont do,” said nurse; “Bridget has tried.”

“Oh, I know!” said Bob. “Kerosene!”

“Thath dangeruth,” said Pip, “and thmells bad, bethides.”

“Nurse,” said the Professor, “what will you give me if I will show you how to take it off?”

“I’ll give you a cent,” said nurse.

“Give me a cent and I’ll do it,” said the Professor. “But I must be paid in advance.” He took the cent. “Now look, all of you,” he said; and, laying it flat on the glass, he held it with the tips of the first and second fingers, and rubbed it briskly over the pane. Off went the spots like buckwheat cakes of a cold winter-morning!

“Oh, how nithe!” said Pip.

“Any feller could do that,” said Bob.

“Yeth,” said Pip, “if they’d theen anybody do it before.”

“Why, Tom!” cried nurse, “where did you get that paint on your sleeve?”

“There! I told Fred Mason he’d get me all over paint, if he didn’t stop fooling,” said Tom.

“It’th a wewy big thpot,” said Pip.

“It’ll never come off,” said Tom; “and it’s my new jacket, too! Mason pushed me against the door.”

“Well,” said the Professor, “there’s no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Oh,” said Pip, “is it milk in the paint that makth it so white?”

“Nonsense, Pip! The thing to do now is to get the paint off Tom’s coat. Who knows how to do it?”

“Don’t fink anybody duth,” said Pip.

“Hold out your arm,” said the Professor. And, with the sleeve of his own coat, he briskly rubbed the sleeve of Tom’s; and away went the spot of paint in a jiffy.

“He’s wubbed it onto his own thleeve,” said Pip.

But no; the Professor’s sleeve was as clean as Tom’s.

“Where ith it went to?” said Pip. “Oh, nurse! Ithn’t that thingler?”

“I say,” said Bob, “you couldn’t have got it off if it had dried on your coat.”

“Perhaps not,” said the Professor.

It was again luncheon-time, and Pip, Tom, and Bob were in the dining-room, where nurse Charlotte, seated at the head of the table, was already pouring herself out a cup of tea. She had cut bread and butter for the children, filled their tumblers with milk, and was ready, when they should be ready, to help them to the apple-and-sago pudding—“just the nithest pudding in the world,” as merry little Pip used to say every time it came on table.

All the children were there but the Professor; the others did not know where he was. Pip was the first one to see him coming across the lawn.

“How queer!” said Pip. “He’th all mud, and what hath he got in hith hand?”

“It’s a turtle,” says Tom.

“It’th a bird,” says Pip.

“Perhaps it’s a turtle-dove,” says nurse.

“Should say ’t was a mud-turtle by the looks of his legs,” said Bob.

“Nurth, do turtle-doves live in the mud?” said Pip.

“Nonsense,” said Bob, “as if birds ever lived in the mud!”

“Well,” said Pip, “thum thwallows, I know, make their neths of mud, and then they live in their neths, and that’s living in mud. But here comth the Profethor; let’s see what heeth found. It’s thumthin in a glath.”

The Professor came up, walking very slowly across the grass; then stepped carefully up upon the piazza, and, as he passed the window, he called for some one to come and open the front door.

All the children ran together, and opened the door with such a flourish, the Professor was obliged to call out, “Stand off! Hands off!”

“Will it splode?” said Pip.

“Will it bite?” said Bob.

“Will it fly away?” said Tom.

“It will splode,” said the Professor, “and it will fly away; but it won’t bite.”

“Oh my!” said Pip, “what can it be? I never heard of any creature splodin!”

The Professor looked pleased; his face was red, his hair was tumbled, his coat was torn, and his boots and trousers were muddy.

“You look as if you had had a hard time catching the creature, whatever it is,” said nurse. “You’d better leave it out-of-doors now, and clean yourself, and come and eat your luncheon.”

“Oh, please, nurse, let’s see it now!” said all the children; and nurse, who wanted to see it herself, agreed.

“You can’t see it,” said the Professor; “it’s invisible! You can’t see it till it disappears!”

“Oh dear,” said Pip, “I just ache to know about it.”

“Well,” said the Professor, “light mamma’s wax-taper.”

“I don’t see what good lighting a taper will do, if the creature’s invisible,” said Bob.

The Professor set his burden down on the table. It was a saucer filled with water, and in the water stood a tumbler upside down. There was nothing to be seen in the tumbler.

The Professor struck an attitude.

“What I have in this tumbler, nurse and children, was obtained with great difficulty. I’ve been about it ever since lesson-time.”

“Where did you find it?” says Pip.

“How came you to know about it?” says Tom.

“I should think it would be hard to catch nothing,” says Bob.

“I found it in the water, in the little pool in our woods. I saw it first the other night in the dark, and I caught it to-day when it was hiding. I took a long stick and gently stirred up the dead leaves that lie rotting on the bottom, and he began to come up—first one, then another—now here, and now there.”

“Ho! ho!” says Bob. “How could that be? How could he come up in pieces, and in different places?”

“Poor thing!” said Pip. “He wath dead!”

“Oh, if he’s dead I don’t care about him,” says Bob.

“He’s far from dead,” said the Professor; “and though he was in pieces, he’s all together now, and safe in this tumbler.” And then, seizing the lighted taper, he turned up the tumbler, held the taper quickly to its mouth, and—Pop! went something, with a quick flash.

“Oh, fire-works!” says Bob.

“Oh, tell us truly about it!” says Tom. “Where did you buy it? Let’s have some for the Fourth!”

“Children,” said the Professor, “I have told you the truth about it. It’s gas. It’s carbureted hydrogen. I found it in the pond. ‘Carbureted hydrogen’ is its science name. Its poetry name is ‘Will-o’-the-wisp,’ and there’s another name besides.”

“I should think two names were enough for nothing,” says Bob.

“What’th the other name?” said Pip.

“Ignis fatuus,” said the Professor. “It means ‘Cheating-fire.’ Sometimes this gas, rising to the top of the water in bubbles, takes fire (by what they call spontaneous combustion, or by mixing with some other gas, or in some other way), and then, as one bubble after another takes fire and goes flickering along, it looks as if some one were walking through the woods with a lantern.”

“And thath how it cheat-th, isn’t it?” said Pip. “But I don’t thee how it is thet afire. Perhapth, now—perhapth it’s the fire-flyth!”

“Oh, good for you!” said the Professor; and he chased her round the table, and caught her, and kissed her.

“Well, how did you ever get it with that tumbler?” said Tom.

“Well, easy enough. First, I filled the tumbler with water. Then I laid the saucer over the top. Then I plunged the whole under the water, holding tumbler and saucer with both hands firm, and turned them over in the water, and drew them out. The saucer, as well as the tumbler, was then full of water, and though the tumbler was upside down the water couldn’t fall out.”

“What hindered it, I’d like to know?” said Bob.

“Atmospheric pressure,” said the Professor, pushing the words out slowly. “The whole atmosphere weighs down on the water in the saucer and balances the water in the tumbler and keeps it in.”

“It had all leaked out before you reached home, anyway,” said Bob.

“The gas pushed it out,” said the Professor, “I told you how I stirred up the bottom of the pool. It was all covered with dead leaves. These as they rot give out gas, but it cannot easily escape from the bottom, and stays down among the leaves and slime till it is stirred up. Then the little bubbles of gas come popping up, and as they mount I am ready with my tumbler and saucer. I slip them both softly into the water a little way off, draw out the saucer, slide the inverted tumbler over the bubbles before they break; and the gas mounts into the tumbler, each bubble of gas displacing a little water; then over more bubbles, and more and more, until all the water in the tumbler is out and the gas is in its place; then I fill the saucer with water again, slide it under the tumbler, and bring it home.”

“Come to your luncheon, children,” cried nurse. “The pudding will be cold.”

“Oh, wait a minute,” said Tom. “You said the gas drove out the water in the tumbler. Why don’t it drive out the water in the saucer?”

The Professor looked puzzled.

“Well, it would in time, I suppose. But you see, its nature is to push upward, because it’s light——”

“Oh, now, it pushes the same every way,” said Tom.

“There’s something we don’t know,” said Bob.

“Oh, yeth, I am afwaid we don’t know it all,” said Pip.

“Well,” drawled the Professor, “I don’t know, only I guess it’s because the water is too dense—too close together, for one thing; and the same atmospheric pressure that kept the water in keeps the gas in, for another.”

“There, I do believe that’s it,” said Pip. “Oh, how nice it did pop off! Like a vewy small fwier-cracker a great way off. Now let’s have some pudding. Apple and sago! Just the nithest pudding in the world!”

One day an ant went to visit her neighbor; She found her quite busy with all sorts of labor; So she didn’t go in, but stopped at the sill; Left her respects, and went back to her hill.