Bell grove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a man, a scholar, a leader or even as a companion, was neverless utterly alone. For the weak, above all, have their friends. Yet his gentleness, his pretence at authority, his palpable humanity was unable, for some reason or other, to function. He was demonstrably the type of venerable and absent-minded professor about whom all the sharp-beaked boys of the world should swarm.