THERE were three professors — associate and full — in the Department of Modern History. There was also an office-boy. His printed title was Department Assistant, but his duties were less dignified than his title.

Each of the professors had his private office opening from the main office. The assistant had a desk in the main office with the telephone close beside it. He answered the telephone and took messages over it, he assorted roll-cards and made out class-books and hunted through the files for records of former students. In the intervals of his occupation he crammed sedulously from illprinted source-books, in preparation for the work of various advanced courses in history. And now and then, between the two kinds of labor, he lifted down the receiver of the telephone from its hook and, very softly, held over it converse quite unrelated to historical research.

It was, unfortunately, the bachelor professor who first discovered the reason for this diversion. He took his information straight to the head of department and launched it in the form of a question.

‘It was Hawke of Illinois who recommended Barker to us, was n’t it?’

‘Not Hawke; Holland. He said that he had found him so earnest —'

‘Did he say he’d found him married?’ asked the bachelor professor.

He answered the question himself. ‘Very likely Holland did n’t know. It may have come off this summer. What do we pay him, by the way?’

‘It amounts to about forty-five dollars a month,’ the head of department calculated. ‘Are you sure, McFarland? I supposed he’d be engaged,— all graduate students are, — but for anything more than that —’

‘ I met the lady in the office just now, looking for her husband. Well, of course he has private means or he could n’t have done it.’

‘Ought n’t to have done it,’ the head of department corrected him. ‘You can get a marriage license, McFarland, for considerably less than forty-five dollars.’

‘And pay your bills with it afterwards?’ the bachelor professor retorted.

He went out across the main office to his own quarters. The assistant had not yet come in. The bachelor professor stopped for an instant beside his desk and went on, laughing. Among the litter of papers at the back of the desk was visible the head of a purple pansy.

He saw the pansy later in the assistant’s buttonhole and commented on it. The assistant reddened to his crisp, fair forelock.

‘My—Mrs. Barker left it for me. We’ve a bed of them at the house where we have our rooms.’

‘And said it without shame,’ the bachelor professor reported to his colleagues. ‘Seemed to expect me to take an interest in her.'

‘I do not know that it would have compromised you to take an interest,’ commented the head of department. He spoke with irritation. ‘It was outside of my province but I — I questioned Mr. Barker. It seems he has a little money laid up from working in summer. And with that and the hope of holding his position here till such time as he gets his degree —’

‘So that’s why he’s so abominably conscientious,’ the bachelor professor interpolated. ‘Well, commend me to wives! Next time I see her, I shall congratulate her.’

Next time he saw her, however, he only bowed and hurried through the office with a distinct and amused sensation of being in the way. It was at the end of a working-day, and the assistant and his wife were departing on some evidently planned expedition, an obtrusive box bespeaking lunch, a bundle of wraps promising late return.

‘And on forty-five a month!’ the bachelor professor wondered. He stopped to chat beside the assistant’s desk next day, with a real humility of spirit,’to obscure his curiosity.

But the assistant was not shy of gratifying curiosity. All the office knew presently of his expedients; how he earned the rental of their two rooms by taking care of furnace and lawn — ’No more than I’d do if I lived in a house of my own’; how he had engaged to sell books in the Christmas vacation.

‘Much as my room-mate used to plan,’ the bachelor professor admitted. ‘He worked his way through college. But to do it handicapped by a wife! ’

They had occasional glimpses of the wife for a time. Then no more glimpses, but still the chance appearance of purple pansies on the assistant’s desk. He wore one daily, too. The bachelor professor found himself wondering whether the giver raised them in pots, to have a constant supply; or whether, on an assistant’s stipend, she dared to patronize hot-houses.

‘She’ll get over it, either way,’ he prophesied to himself. ‘It’s all very well for a year or two. After that, I notice they don’t pay much attention to æsthetics.’

As the frosts came on, he was consciously observant of the symbolic flower. There came a day in December when it was visibly drooping; then a second day when only a dead wisp of it hung limply to the thread of his coat.

‘I thought they’d get down to a bread-and-butter basis,’ the bachelor professor rejoiced to the head of department. ‘I tell you, Callend, it’s a justification of bachelorhood. If the pansies won’t outlast the first winter — ’

‘It’s a justification of poor work, apparently,’ said the head of department. ‘He’s forgotten my syllabus sheets.’ He opened the door. ‘There was to be a syllabus from the typewriter this morning, Mr. Barker. If you have it there—’

‘I — I forgot to stop for it,’ said the assistant. He reached for his hat. ‘It won’t take me ten minutes to get it. Only — if the telephone should ring — ’ He was turning the hat round and round between his fingers. The set crease of his smile was like a scar across his face. ‘I’m expecting a message. That is, — we — The doctor said —’

‘Not — sick?’ said the bachelor professor under his breath.

But the head of department was himself a man of family. He had the assistant by the shoulders.

‘Go home, man!’ he was commanding. ‘Go home, and don’t come back till it’s a week old!’

He must have followed his command with inquiries, with further injunctions, for for five days the assistant disappeared from his desk. In the interval three professors of modern history carried their own syllabus sheets, kept their own roll-books — two of them self-consciously, with an air of furtive understanding, the third with irritation and obvious injury.

‘I never asked any man to discommode himself for me,’ the manner of the bachelor professor announced aggressively as he made his occasional journeys to the neglected telephone. He was careful to evince no undue interest when the assistant returned, but he could not ignore the little hum of felicitation which filled the outer office. ‘A boy,’ he learned through the medium of the Professor of the Far East. ‘Weighed eight pounds.’

The Professor of the Far East had himself a son, — a late addition to his married happiness, — and had become since its arrival, so the bachelor professor noted, ‘a regular old woman.’ He stopped often beside the assistant’s desk to compare notes on unmanly topics, his wife called on the assistant’s wife, and there was an interchange of advices between them.

It was through the medium of the wives that there filtered into general department knowledge certain facts concerning the assistant’s household — that Mrs. Barker was ‘no manager,’ that the baby was inclined to be delicate, that the assistant himself had duties not included in the curriculum.

‘Though he does not neglect his work,’ the head of department pointed out. ‘Sometimes I almost wish he would. When I recollect how a child breaks into your time —’

‘And he ought to know,’ the bachelor professor reminded himself. ‘Mrs. Callend would give him chance enough to find out.’ He went over to the assistant’s desk. ‘If you’re crowded, Mr. Barker,’ he suggested, ‘don’t trouble with that list of references for next week. If you want to let them go over till after Commencement—’

‘Why, thank you, Dr. McFarland,’ said the assistant, gratefully. He looked up with a smile so brilliant that it was obviously false. ‘I shall have time enough, I think. In fact, I was just telling Professor Helmer that I’m rather looking for something to fill in my evenings — typewriting or tutoring or something of the kind. If you should hear of anything—’

‘Idiot!’ said the bachelor professor, inside his own office. ‘Idiot! And yet you can’t offer to help him out — not while he keeps up a front like that!’

He was surer than ever of the impossibility when, next day, the assistant knocked at his office door. If the assistant’s smile had been brilliant the day before, it was glittering tinsel now. His bearing was almost offensively jaunty.

‘May I trouble you a moment, Dr. McFarland? About those references, if you are quite sure it would n’t inconvenience you — You see, I was interrupted last night—’

‘Something wrong at home?’ said the bachelor professor.

The smile wavered, came back reinforced.

‘The boy was n’t quite himself. He seemed to have a little cold —’

The telephone rang and he hurried to answer it. All the office could hear his quick replies — an anguish of monosyllables.

‘Yes? What? Yes. Two degrees? Yes, I’ll be right home.’

He was back at his post in the afternoon. The Professor of the Far East clapped him jocularly on the shoulder and spoke of his baby’s first cold.

‘ Called a doctor every time he sneezed. Two hundred and thirty dollars I paid out last winter for a baby that never was sick at all.’

‘ Mine’s sick,’ said the assistant, with his haunted smile. ‘He’s got fever.’

He was late in his arrival next morning. The bachelor professor, stopping with an inquiry, was answered before he spoke by the elaborate indifference of the father’s manner.

‘No; I don’t know that I can call him better. Some little thing wrong about his teeth. They’re going to operate — ’

‘What !’ cried the bachelor professor.

‘ — Going to operate this afternoon. They’re to telegraph me—’

The bachelor professor crossed the room to the office of the head of department. He stopped beside the desk as he had stopped beside the assistant’s desk, and scowled down at its occupant.

‘Callend, young Barker’s no business to be here to-day. His baby—’

‘I spoke with Mr. Barker as I came in,’ said the head of department. He looked up under gray brows. ‘There seems to be nothing he could do if he were at the hospital. I did not suggest his going. You see, McFarland, you ’ve never been under a strain of this kind —’

‘No; thank the Lord!’ said the bachelor professor.

‘And, perhaps, you underestimate the value of occupation. One thing, though. If you could somehow suggest to Helmer that he talk less to Mr. Barker about his baby —’

‘He’ll be dumb, then,’ commented the colleague of Helmer sourly.

Matters grew worse as the morning went on. The bachelor professor had an engagement for luncheon. He telephoned his regrets at eleven; returning from the telephone to his own quarters, he was fiercely irritated to observe that the head of department was still in his office.

‘And with his door open,’ he noted.

He shut his own door with unnecessary emphasis.

But the assistant seemed to observe neither the closed door nor the open one. He went about his duties, smiling valiantly — smiling while he distributed History 9 syllabus sheets to the class in History 7; smiling while his unsteady fingers shook ink over the bachelor professor’s immaculate rollbook. Just after noon the Professor of the Far East burst in on his colleagues.

‘Find an errand for him somewhere,’ he demanded. ‘I can’t work while he’s around. I keep on thinking all the while, “What if it were my boy?” ’

‘What if it were, indeed!’ said the head of department, a little flatly. He gathered up some loose sheets off his desk. ‘Mr. Barker, will you take these over to the typewriter? Don’t hurry; if you want to stay out in the air —’

The assistant rose unreadily. ‘Thank you. I’ll be right back, though. If there should be any word —’

He was gone before the sentence was finished.

From the head of department’s window they watched him hurry across the lawn.

‘He’ll be back, certainly, if he keeps up that pace,’ the bachelor professor commented. ‘But whatever is to happen will happen while he’s gone, none the less.’

He wandered about the room, plucking at the books and papers. Presently, at a sound, he stopped and looked into the outer office. ‘See there?’ he demanded, with a kind of triumph.

A small boy stood in the office. He held a yellow envelope between his fingers. For an instant all three waited, staring at him; then the head of department went forward, took the envelope, and signed the necessary receipt. He came back, balancing it.

‘I don’t know—There’s hardly time to send it after him.’

‘Lay it on his desk,’ the Professor of the Far East suggested.

‘And for decency’s sake, shut the door. Don’t let him feel we’re spying on him,’ the bachelor professor insisted.

But the head of department hesitated, his hand on the knob.

‘I think I’ll leave it open, McFarland. If it should be — the worst news

— However, there’s no need for three of us. If you two have other things on hand —’

‘You’ve a one-thirty class yourself, have n’t you?’ the bachelor professor inquired. He resumed his pacing.

They heard the assistant on the stairs presently. They heard him hurry into the room; stop; drag his way toward the desk. There was a noise of tearing paper, the crackle of the sheet spread large; then, unmistakably, a sob.

‘Oh, my God, if it was Harold!’ said the Professor of the Far East, under his breath.

It was a long minute before the assistant stirred. When he did, he came toward the threshold, and the head of department went forward to meet him — haltingly.

‘Mr. Barker — there’s not much I can say. My own oldest boy—’

‘I just heard,’ said the assistant.

He held out the paper.

The bachelor professor leaned forward and plucked the yellow sheet from his fingers. There were four words in the message. He took them in at a glance.

‘Tooth through. Temperature normal.’

‘Callend,’ said the bachelor professor gently, ‘you’ve still time to make that one-thirty class if you wish to make it. I think I’ll get back to work myself, too.’

Inside his own quarters he stood still, looking down at the paper.

‘And when they’re sick,’ he analyzed, ‘when they’re sick, you’re in torment. And when they’re well, you dare n’t rejoice for fear they’ll fall sick again. And yet you could n’t persuade any one of them it was n’t worth while — not even on forty-five dollars a month. There’s something — something I miss — Well, thank the Lord, the Department of Modern History at least can resume operations. The assistant’s baby has safely cut a tooth.’