"On the contrary," said Vernon, "Miss Voscoe is everybody--almost!"
"I'm the nobody who can't get a word in edgeways anyhow," she said. "What I've been trying to say ever since I was born--pretty near--is that what this class wants is a competent Professor, some bully top-of-the-tree artist, to come and pull our work all to pieces and wipe his boots on the bits. Mr. Vernon, don't you know any one who's pining to give us free crits?"
"Temple is," said Vernon. "There's no mistaking that longing glance of his."
"As a competent professor I make you my bow of gratitude," said Temple, "but I should never have the courage to criticise the work of nine fair ladies."
"You needn't criticise them all at once," said a large girl from Minneapolis, "nor yet all in the gaudy eye of heaven. We'll screen off a corner for our Professor--sort of confessional business. You sit there and we'll go to you one by one with our sins in our hand."
"That would scare him some I surmise," said Miss Voscoe.
"Not at all," said Temple, a little nettled, he hardly knew why.
"I didn't know you were so brave," said the Minneapolis girl.
"Perhaps he didn't want you to know," said Miss Voscoe; "perhaps that's his life's dark secret."
"People often pretend to a courage that they haven't," said Vernon. "A consistent pose of cowardice, that would be novel and--I see the idea developing--more than useful."
"Is that your pose?" asked Temple, still rather tartly, "because if it is, I beg to offer you, in the name of these ladies, the chair of Professor-behind-the-screen."
"I'm not afraid of the nine Muses," Vernon laughed back, "as long as they are nine. It's the light that lies in woman's eyes that I've always had such a nervous dread of."
"It does make you blink, bless it," said the Irish student, "but not from nine pairs at once, as you say. It's the light from one pair that turns your head."
"Mr. Vernon isn't weak in the head," said the shy boy suddenly.
"No," said Vernon, "it's the heart that's weak with me. I have to be very careful of it."
"Well, but will you?" said a downright girl.
"Will I what? I'm sorry, but I've lost my cue, I think. Where were we--at losing hearts, wasn't it?"