But to me it was a serious matter. More than serious. If I have done
my work as historian with any adequate degree of skill, the reader
should have gathered by this time the state of my feelings.
My love had grown with the days. Mr. J. Holt Schooling, or somebody
else with a taste for juggling with figures, might write a very
readable page or so of statistics in connection with the growth of
love in the heart of a man. In some cases it is, I believe, slow. In
my own I can only say that Jack's beanstalk was a backward plant in
comparison. It is true that we had not seen a great deal of one
another, and that, when we had met, our interviews had been brief and
our conversation conventional; but it is the intervals between the
meetings that do the real damage. Absence, as the poet neatly remarks,
makes the heart grow fonder. And now, thanks to Ukridge's amazing
idiocy, a barrier had been thrust between us. As if the business of
fishing for a girl's heart were not sufficiently difficult and
delicate without the addition of needless obstacles! It was terrible
to have to reestablish myself in the good graces of the professor
before I could so much as begin to dream of Phyllis.
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