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 he lets Uggug take away all my toys! And such horrid meals!’
‘What did you have for dinner to-day?’ said the Professor.
‘A little piece of a dead crow,’ was Bruno’s mournful reply.
‘He means rook-pie,’ Sylvie explained.
‘It were a dead crow,’ Bruno persisted. ‘And there were a apple-pudding—and Uggug ate it all—and I got nuffin but a crust! And I asked for a orange—and—didn’t get it!’ And the poor little fellow buried his face in Sylvie’s lap, who kept gently stroking his hair, as she went on. ‘It’s all true, Professor dear! They do treat my darling Bruno very badly! And they’re not kind to me either,’ she added in a lower tone, as if that were a thing of much less importance.
The Professor got out a large red silk handkerchief, and wiped his eyes. ‘I wish I could help you, dear children!’ he said. ‘But what can I do?’
‘We know the way to Fairyland—where Father’s gone—quite well,’ said Sylvie: ‘if only the Gardener would let us out.’
‘Wo’n’t he open the door for you?’ said the Professor.
‘Not for us,’ said Sylvie: ‘but I’m sure he would for you. Do come and ask him, Professor dear!’
‘I’ll come this minute!’ said the Professor.
Bruno sat up and dried his eyes. ‘Isn’t he kind, Mister Sir?’
‘He is indeed,’ said I. But the Professor took no notice of my remark. He had put on a beautiful cap with a long tassel, and was selecting one of the Other Professor’s walking-sticks, from a stand in the corner of the room. ‘A thick stick in one’s hand makes people respectful,’ he was saying to himself. ‘Come along, dear children!’ And we all went out into the garden together.
‘I shall address him, first of all,’ the Professor explained as we went along, ‘with a few playful remarks on the weather. I shall then question him about the Other Professor. This will have a double advantage. First, it will open the conversation (you ca’n’t even drink a bottle of wine without opening it first): and secondly, if he’s seen the Other Professor, we shall find him that way: and, if he hasn’t, we sha’n’t.’
On our way, we passed the target, at which Uggug had been made to shoot during the Ambassador’s visit.
‘See!’ said the Professor, pointing out a hole in the middle of the bull’s-eye. ‘His Imperial Fatness had only one shot at it; and he went in just here!’
Bruno carefully examined the hole. ‘Couldn’t go in there,’ he whispered to me. ‘He are too fat!’
We had no sort of difficulty in finding