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During the week of suspense I nearly worried myself into a fever. It was first crazy hope, and then saner despair. On Friday evening, when I presented myself at the Professor's door, I was such a haggard, sleepy, dragged-out spectre, that even Miss Jocasta, the harsh-favored maiden sister of the Surd's, admitted me with commiserate regard, and suggested pennyroyal tea.
And, therefore, it came that Furnace Second was reduced to zero in Professor Surd's estimation. He looked upon me with all the horror which an unalgebraic nature could inspire. I have seen the Professor walk around an entire square rather than meet the man who had no mathematics in his soul. For Furnace Second were no invitations to Professor Surd's house.
Surd's justly celebrated lemon pies; not that the spheroidal damsons of her excellent preserving had any marked allurements; not even that I yearned to hear the Professor's jocose table-talk about binomials, and chatty illustrations of abstruse paradoxes. The explanation is far different. Professor Surd had a daughter. Twenty years before, he made a proposition of marriage to the present Mrs.
"With many sincere thanks for the amusement you have given us often when you least suspected it we bid you a lasting adieu, and remain, with the best wishes, "Brant House, "Wednesday." "It is all the fault of that, aw that confounded Thomas!" said Ned. So Thomas was discharged. Atlantic Monthly, June, 1863. There was nothing mysterious about Professor Surd's dislike for me.
I remember wondering, as I rushed through the darkness, whether I should reach Kerguellen's Land or stop at the centre. It seemed an eternity. Then my course was suddenly and painfully arrested. I opened my eyes. Around me were the walls of Professor Surd's study. Under me was a hard, unyielding plane which I knew too well was Professor Surd's study floor.
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