Chapter 12

A MUSICAL GARDENER.

The Other Professor regarded him with some anxiety. "The smaller
animal ought to go to bed at once," he said with an air of authority.

"Why at once?" said the Professor.

"Because he can't go at twice," said the Other Professor.

The Professor gently clapped his hands. 'Isn't he wonderful!" he said
to Sylvie. "Nobody else could have thought of the reason, so quick.
Why, of course he ca'n't go at twice! It would hurt him to be divided."

This remark woke up Bruno, suddenly and completely.
"I don't want to be divided," he said decisively.

"It does very well on a diagram," said the Other Professor.
"I could show it you in a minute, only the chalk's a little blunt."

"Take care!" Sylvie anxiously exclaimed, as he began, rather clumsily,
to point it. "You'll cut your finger off, if you hold the knife so!"

"If oo cuts it off, will oo give it to me, please? Bruno thoughtfully
added.

"It's like this," said the Other Professor, hastily drawing a long line
upon the black board, and marking the letters 'A,' 'B,' at the two ends,
and 'C' in the middle: "let me explain it to you. If AB were to be
divided into two parts at C--"

"It would be drownded," Bruno pronounced confidently.

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