“There, there!” I always wanted to say—­until I, too, became accustomed to it.  “It’s all right.  You can’t help it.”

It was dear of them all the same, however, and I would not seem ungrateful for their kind consideration.  After all, how different from the purse-proud arrogance of wealth seen in our best—­selling—­fiction, though seldom elsewhere.

For the most part they were true gentlefolk, with the low voices and simple manners of several generations of breeding; and I liked them, for the most part, very much—­especially certain old friends of our parents, who, I learned later, were willing to show their true friendship in more ways than Carl and I could permit.

One is frequently informed that the great compensation for underpaying the college professor is in the leisure to live—­otium cum dignitate as returning old grads call it when they can remember their Latin, though as most of them cannot they call it a snap.

Carl, by the way, happened to be the secretary of his class, and his popularity with dear old classmates became a nuisance in our tiny home.  I remember one well-known bachelor of arts who answered to the name of Spud, a rather vulgar little man.  Comfortably seated in Carl’s study one morning, with a cigar in his mouth, Spud began: 

“My, what a snap!  A couple of hours’ work a day and three solid months’ vacation!  Why, just see, here you are loafing early in the morning!  You ought to come up to the city!  Humph!  I’d show you what real work means.”

Now my husband had been writing until two o’clock the night before, so that he had not yet made preparation for his next hour.  It was so early indeed that I had not yet made the beds.  Besides, I had heard all about our snap before and it was getting on my nerves.

“Carl would enjoy nothing better than seeing you work,” I put in when the dear classmate finished; “but unfortunately he cannot spare the time.”

Spud saw the point and left; but Carl, instead of giving me the thanks I deserved, gave me the first scolding of our married life!  Now isn’t that just like a husband?

Of course it can be proved by the annual catalogue that the average member of the Faculty has only about twelve or fourteen hours of classroom work a week—­the worst-paid instructor more; the highest-paid professor less.  What a university teacher gives to his students in the classroom, however, is or ought to be but a rendering of what he acquires outside, as when my distinguished father tried one of his well-prepared cases in court.  Every new class, moreover, is a different proposition, as I once heard my brother say of his customers.