(WITH MR. PUNCH'S APOLOGIES TO THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S "ACADEMIC
ENTHUSIAST.")
"She-Pantaloons? seedy? Now, do we _look_ like it?"
The speaker was a tall, robust maiden with fair hair; on her knee was
an edition (without notes) of the _Anabasis of Xenophon_, and by her
side was _Liddell and Scott's Lexicon_, in which she had just been
21 tracking an exceptionally difficult--but, let me hasten to add, a
perfectly regular--Greek verb to its lair. There were a considerable
number of roseate specimens of English womanhood in the library of
Girnham College, where, with some natural diffidence, I had ventured
to put the rather delicate question to which I received the above
reply.
For I had been much troubled in my soul about Sir JAMES CRICHTON
BROWNE's recent deliverances with regard to the injurious physical
effect of the Higher Education upon women, and, as a devoted--if
hitherto unappreciated--admirer of the Fair Sex, I felt I had a
theoretical interest in the question, and was bound to verify Dr.
BROWNE's views. The most obvious way of satisfying my anxiety was to
go to Girnham myself and ask the lady students what _they_ thought
about it, and so I did.
[Illustration: "I received the football in the pit of my stomach."]
"I quite agree," I said, mildly, as I unwound my comforter, "that your
course of studies seems to suit you remarkably well. Quite a bevy of
female admirable CRICHT--!"
The effect was immediate; an unmistakable rush of lexicons--or were
they Todhunters?--hurtled around my devoted head from the fair hands
of disturbed and ruffled girlhood.
"Pray don't mention that person again!" said my fair-haired
interlocutor, and I thought I wouldn't.
"Well, but," I began, with heroic daring, as I laid aside my
respirator, "as to weak _chests_ now?"
I was interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing, which I tried to explain,
as my young friends thumped my back with unnecessary zeal, was, owing
to my having imprudently ventured out without my chest-protector. As
soon as I was able, I feebly hazarded the suggestion that, for growing
girls, the habit of stooping over their books seemed calculated to
induce weakness in the lungs--but their roars of merriment at the idea
instantly convinced me that any uneasiness on this score was entirely
superfluous.
"You certainly all look remarkably well," I observed, genially,
"particularly sunburnt and brow--"
Here there was a roar of quite another kind. I endeavoured to protest,
as I got behind an arm-chair and dodged a Differential Calculus and a
large glass inkstand, that I hadn't meant to allude to the obnoxious
Physician at all, but had merely intended to convey my hearty admir--
"I know what you're going to say!" interrupted the fair-haired girl,
vivaciously. "And you had better not."
As she spoke, she raised me from my seat by the coat-collar with no
apparent effort, and deposited me on the top of a tall bookcase, from
which I found myself compelled to prosecute my inquiries.
"Nature has been very bountiful to you--very much so, I am sure," I
murmured, blinking amiably down upon them through the spectacles
I wear to correct a slight tendency to strabismus. "Still, don't
you--er--find that your eyes--"