The Charm School/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
DURING Mrs. Bevans's lifetime it had been against the rules for the girls—even those with families in the neighborhood—to go home for Sunday. So it was still, but under Miss Curtis's milder reign many girls attempted it, and some actually succeeded.
The day after Austin's visit, which was a Saturday, Sally Boyd, whose parents had a large country place near by, went home and took Elise with her. They felt they needed the uninterrupted leisure of twenty-four hours in order properly to discuss the recent events of school life.
The Boyd family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Boyd and two children—George and Sally. Greorge, the elder of the two, was employed in Mr. Johns's bank, and had, ever since he was a little boy, worshiped Elise—a devotion which had become an unexciting, but not an unsatisfactory, part of her every-day life. When things went badly with her and the world seemed hostile, she often caught herself murmuring, "Well, anyhow, George worships me"; and, so undiscriminating is human egotism, that she took great comfort in this thought, although she attached but little importance in general to George's opinion.
Mr. Boyd was a tall, heavy man, not so good tempered as fat people are supposed to be. Both George and Sally took after him physically; indeed, Mrs. Boyd, who was pretty and slight, seemed like a visitor in her own family, or like a captured fairy who has assumed obligations toward her jailers. She was at heart a strangely unmaternal person, but sympathetic, and so interested—not to say curious—about all lives, her children's among others, that she really knew and understood more about them than many better parents.
"Well," she said, eagerly, as the five sat down to dinner that evening, "have you seen your new headmaster yet, and, if so, what's he like?" She would have been just as much interested in the experience of total strangers, but the girls did not know that.
They, on the other hand, were struggling with the problem that assails all young people, business men, indeed any one who is at once a member of a family and involved in outside interests. With every wish to be friendly and chatty, they did not want to submit their difficulties to the arbitration of family discussion until they were sure it couldn't do any harm. Sally could not be quite certain whether or not she were in love with Austin, and until she settled that point for herself she did not really want any parental counsel. So now, in answer to her mother's question, she dropped a veil like a mask over her open countenance and replied that Mr. Bevans seemed to be "all right."
This wouldn't do for Mrs. Boyd at all. "But describe him, describe him," she said. She would have been content to be a bed-ridden invalid for the rest of her life if every one she knew would have contracted to come and give her every detail of his own adventures. "Is he young or old?"
"He's about twenty-five," said Sally, reluctantly.
"What?" said her brother, starting out of a dreamy contemplation of Elise.
"He's older than that," said Elise.
"I should hope so," said George.
"He's twenty-eight," Elise went on.
"What?" cried George again.
"Why, that's an extraordinary thing, isn't it?" said Mr. Boyd, looking hard at his wife down the length of the table, as if no one would understand what he was trying to convey by the look.
Mrs. Boyd dived to the essential. "Is he nice-looking?" she asked.
At this the faces of the two girls became like carved stone, and at last Sally dropped a casual, "Why, yes," as much as to say, if you are interested in that sort of thing, I suppose you might think so.
"How perfectly wonderful!" said Mrs. Boyd. "You must describe him to me."
The Sphinxlike quality in Sally did not go very deep, and she answered, eagerly:
"Well, I think he looks like the picture of Tristram that hangs in the back hall."
"Oh, that horrid picture!" said Elise. "Mr. Bevans is so much more virile-looking."
"I mean if it had blue eyes and a better figure," said Sally.
"Really, mother," cried George, "do you think Sally ought to talk about a school-master's figure and eyes? She ought not know he has them."
"Wouldn't be much use as a teacher if he hadn't," answered Sally.
"Do you mean that the fellow is handsome?" inquired George in the same tone Miss Curtis had used, as if it were a contemptible quality for a man to possess. Sally began to giggle, but Elise, turning fully to George and fixing her eyes on his, replied, clearly:
"He is the handsomest man I ever saw."
"How outrageous!" said George.
"How amusing!" said his mother.
"Rather an unusual situation," said his father, with another glance.
"Well," said George in a loud tone, rather modeled on Mr. Johns's own, "I hope, mother, you don't intend to allow it."
"To allow Mr. Bevans to be so handsome, George?" inquired his mother, mildly.
"To allow Sally to stay in such a place. You ought to take her away—you ought to warn Mr. Johns."
"My grandfather?" said Elise, innocently. "Oh, grandfather is crazy about Mr. Bevans. It was he who brought him up in his car yesterday. I don't know when I've seen him so nice to any younger man."
This piece of information was, as it was perhaps intended to be, the last straw. George was afraid of Mr. Johns, not only because he shouted and grunted, not only because he was at the head of the bank, not only because he controlled Elise's destiny, but because he made him, George, seem like a fool. The very way in which he shouted, "Ha, George!" on seeing him, as if arrest in the king's name was about to follow, drove every sensible idea out of George's mind. The notion, therefore, that this adventurous schoolmaster, this Tristram with blue eyes, was not only free of this terror, but actually contrived to make the great man motor him about the country, was simply intolerable.
"It's out of the question," he said, trying to rouse his parents to some sense of their responsibilities. "It can't be allowed. It ought to be against the law for a man under thirty to own a girls' school—particularly if he is handsome."
"Wouldn't it be amusing," said Mrs. Boyd, "to watch a jury deciding how handsome a man had to be in order to disqualify him."
"It's immoral," announced George.
"George always thinks that anything that doesn't suit him is immoral."
"All nice men do, my dear," said her mother. But in her heart she was a little disturbed, for she really wanted her son, like the industrious apprentice, to marry his employer's heir, and she was aware that romantic currents were setting strongly in the opposite direction.
The evening was given over to diplomatic conferences—George with his parents, telling them what they ought to do, say, and fear; George with the girls, trying under the guise of interest to extract information to be used against them, and not getting very far; Mrs. Boyd with the girls, same object and better success; the girls with each other, deciding to be more masklike in the future; and finally, Mr. and Mrs. Boyd, deciding that Mrs. Boyd had better go and look the situation over as soon as the new master was established.
In the course of the evening Elise quarreled with George—at least as much as one can quarrel with a person who believes that nothing said or done can change a relation in the least. Their quarrels always took about the same course. Elise in a moment of candor told George how she really felt toward him; George grew sulky and said if she felt like that they had better not see each other any more. Elise replied that perhaps that would be best. George would then withdraw for a period of a few hours. At the end of that time he would return, having recovered his temper, and advance the theory that Elise had been angry. Elise would answer that she certainly had. George would then laugh, and say, as one old and wise in the ways of women, "I knew you didn't mean what you said." Elise would then assure him that she had meant every word—although she would not have said it if she hadn't been cross. This statement George always took as a huge joke—a feminine whimsy—a charming method of saving her face—and so settled back into his old attitude.
This cycle had been run through by the time they parted on Monday morning.
"It's because I love you so much, Elise," he said, as he bade her good-by. "I want to guard you from him—to be near you and watch over you."
The last words were heard by Sally, who answered: "You might come and give a course in morals, George—you're so strong on morals."
George couldn't think of anything better than, "One of you could learn manners with advantage." He saw them giggling with their heads together as they drove away; and, turning, he observed to his mother that Sally was at a very unattractive period of her development.
On their return to school the girls found that the excitement, far from abating, was increasing every hour. Trunks and cleaning-women had been seen at the white cottage. All the windows in the school-buildings which overlooked the cottage were crowded at all hours, and girls, even the most unpopular, who had rooms on that side of the house, could be sure of an unceasing flow of visitors.
Then came a late afternoon, two days later, when a geranium-colored car glided unannounced up the drive and stopped in front of the cottage door. That evening at supper the whole school was like a regiment on dress parade—every curl in place, every finger manicured. But nothing happened.
Toward the end of an anxious meal, Sally, stirred to action by a whispered word passed to her round the table, inquired of Miss Hayes, who sat next to her, whether Mr. Bevans wasn't very late for supper.
Miss Hayes had been long enough a teacher to be aware of the tense expectation with which the whole school had been watching the door, but she was tactful enough to answer, casually:
"Oh, Mr. Bevans doesn't eat at the school. He has his own cook at the cottage."
The girls looked at one another blankly. They had never imagined such a calamity. They had assumed that in taking over the school he would do exactly as his aunt had done.
An even more alarming possibility now presented itself. "I suppose," said Sally, faintly, "that he'll take the Sacred Literature course to-morrow morning, won't he?"
Miss Hayes was gathering the room together with her eyes, preparatory to making the move, and her attention appeared to be on that as she answered:
"No, Mr. Bevans isn't going to do any teaching at all. Miss Simmons will go on with the Sacred Literature course."
Fifteen buncoed seniors stared at one another in horror. At the beginning of the term they had all elected the stupidest course in the whole school—and as one of them remarked, that was saying a mouthful—on the confident assumption that the nephew would take up the aunt's work. Miss Hayes's cool announcement plunged them all into the deepest thought. Each, having resolved to give up the course, was inventing a plausible reason for dropping it.
As every biologist knows, the nest-making instinct is not wholly absent in the male, and Austin derived the keenest pleasure from settling himself and his few belongings in the white cottage at the edge of the water. The process of settling consisted largely in trying Susie's beautiful, long, brown photograph in different positions. His own dressing-table seemed too intimate, his sitting-room mantelpiece too remote, and he finally decided on the desk in his study, where visiting parents, looking upon it, might understand that he was practically an engaged man.
Though he had taken over the school primarily with the object of making enough money to marry Susie, having taken it over, he desired burningly to do the right thing by his pupils. It had always seemed to him tragic the way the happiness of women in this world depended on their possession of charm. He saw that Miss Hayes and people of her sort were trying to reorganize all human life, so that charm would not be such a preponderating factor. His own ambitions were much less vast; he simply wanted to help the little group under his charge to the attainment of as much of the precious quality as was possible. About this he was extremely serious.
Indeed, exactly the same quality that had made him a good automobile salesman now made him a good school principal—that is, a profound and conscientious attention to detail. His former employers had sometimes thought he carried this tiresomely far, but, now that he was his own boss, he could carry it as far as he liked. It was this attention to detail that from the first made Miss Curtis worship him. She, too, was conscientious, so that she suffered intensely when things went wrong, but so unexecutive that she never knew how to get them right. Mrs. Bevans had been a little slack at times—had pretended that the roof really wasn't leaking and that the furnace-man wasn't drunk. But Austin was on the roof instantly, and had taken the furnace-man to the priest to sign the pledge almost before he was sober enough to know what he was doing.
Austin never confided to Miss Curtis how the furnace-man explained his bad habits, as the geranium-colored car bore him toward the priest's house. "It's this working for women gets me," he said. "It's always so polite they are, and yet always after you."
The first academic problem to present itself was the case of the course in Sacred Literature. Miss Curtis simply couldn't understand it.
"The strangest thing, Mr. Bevans," she said. "All fifteen of the seniors elected it this term—a thing that never happened even when your dear aunt was giving it. Miss Simmons was so flattered. She regarded it naturally enough as a tribute to her. And now all of them—all but one, at least—want to drop it. We can't understand it."
"Why do they want to drop it?"
"All for different reasons, and they seem such good reasons, too. One girl finds it conflicts with a course her parents particularly want her to take, and one thinks it is sacrilegious to treat the Bible as if it were literature, and one says— Eleanor Hayes, what are you laughing at?"
"I'm laughing," said Miss Hayes, who had just entered the conference, "at the unexpected powers of invention that exist in our senior class."
Miss Curtis was shocked. "You mean you don't believe them?" she asked.
"Of course I don't," said Miss Hayes. "They elected the course because they assumed Mr. Bevans was going to give it, and they are dropping it because they find he isn't."
Austin decided to interview them himself in conjunction with Miss Curtis. He derived a great deal of amusement and some information in the process. They came to him—fourteen of them—so candid, so sincere, so willing to be reasonable and meet him half-way. They told their ridiculous stories as if only he, out of all the world, would really understand them. He was particularly impressed by the story of one girl—Helen Doughty by name—who feared that her belief would be undermined by certain doctrinal questions that had come up in connection with the Book of Job.
When they had all finished Austin got up with his hands in his pockets and said:
"Oh, come now, really, girls, this sort of thing won't do. You'll all take the course you elected, and that's an end of it. But while we are on the subject, let me give you a word of advice about trying to put something like this over. Don't be so terribly sincere and candid and reasonable, and, above all, don't be so glib. Do remember that the person you're talking to has probably tried to put something over in his time, and tried to do it by being just as candid and sincere and reasonable as all of you are. Every one ought to have a course in listening to an office-boy trying to get off to a ball-game. There's a look of almost divine innocence that comes over his face that, once seen, is never forgotten. It's been on every one of your faces for the last ten minutes."
There was a pause, and then Sally Boyd said, in the tone of one who had been wounded almost beyond bearing, "You don't mean that you don't believe us, Mr. Bevans?"
And Miss Curtis at his elbow whispered, "Oh, don't say that you don't—please, please!"
"Sally," said Austin, "the rational part of me, to which you have all addressed your remarks exclusively, knows there isn't a joint in your logical statement. But the subsconscious part of me knows that we haven't yet touched on the real reason why you want to get out of the course, whatever that reason may be."
There was another pause, and then the girls nearest the door began to file quietly out. Miss Curtis was deeply distressed. She felt she had witnessed a painful, an almost indecent scene.
"I know you didn't mean it, Mr. Bevans," she said, "but I'm afraid the girls got the idea that you didn't quite believe their word, 
He was particularly impressed by the story of one girl who feared that her belief would be undermined by certain doctrinal questions that had come up in connection with the Book of Job.
and that is such a mistake with these young, sensitive souls.'
"Who was the one senior who didn't appear?"
"Elise Benedotti."
Of course he had known it was she.
On Saturday morning Mr. Johns's accountant was to arrive. Austin was no expert, but when Miss Curtis brought him the books he saw that they were in sad disorder. Perhaps the tragedy of Miss Curtis's life was mitigated by the ease with which one sorrow drove out another. She had now ceased entirely to mourn over the perfidy of the seniors in order to give herself up more completely to remorse at the condition to which, in a few weeks, she had reduced the books. "Only, of course, I'm not a book-keeper," she said, as if this were in some way immensely to her credit. Austin, who didn't consider any disability a matter of pride, had to confess that he wasn't, either.
"I'll look at them," he said; "and send that bookkeeper down to the cottage the very instant he arrives, and see that we're not interrupted."
"No, indeed," said Miss Curtis, who would have promised anything, possible or impossible.
But Miss Hayes was made of sterner stuff. "But I'm afraid you'll have to be interrupted, Mr. Bevans," she put in. "Saturday is a favorite day with parents, and several of them are coming this morning."
"Oh, parents!" said Austin, lightly. "I can't allow them to waste my time. Miss Curtis will interview them, as usual."
Miss Curtis wrung her hands. "I can't, I really can't, Mr. Bevans," she cried. "They make me feel so guilty—especially that horrid Mrs. McLane, who scolds about everything. Not parents—anything but parents."
"Why, it's quite simple, Miss Curtis," said Austin, soothingly. "All you have to say is 'Your daughter is an unusual girl, but then we did not expect your child to be commonplace.' That's all."
Miss Hayes laughed. "It's a good phrase, Mr. Bevans," she said, "but I'm afraid you'll have to speak it yourself. Parents regard it as their inalienable right to talk over their problems with the head of the school. You will lose valuable pupils if you refuse."
Austin, knowing that she was right, yielded, only demanding the letter-files containing the correspondence of any parent known to be due.
But almost at once he regretted his decision; it would have been wiser, he thought, to have remained remote, inaccessible even to parents; to have constituted himself that mysterious entity which no business should be without, which is vaguely referred to by poweriess subordinates as "he." Austin suddenly saw this so clearly that he leaped to his feet, meaning to run over to the school and notify Miss Curtis of his decision, but as he opened his own front door he was confronted by a parent.
She was a minute, pretty person, with pearl earrings, a dotted veil, and neat, fashionable clothes. She said, firmly:
"I want to see Mr. Bevans."
"I am he," said Austin. (He owed it to Mrs. Rolles that he did not say "him.")
The little lady looked at him and began to laugh. "Good gracious!" she said. "I'm awfully sorry, but I did take you for the footman—that's a compliment, you know, now that people go in for these wonderful footmen. Don't you think perhaps you missed your vocation?"
Austin saw immediately that he could not let any parent take this tone with him. "I cannot flatter myself, madam," he said, "that you did me the honor to visit me in order to discuss my vocation."
"Bless me," said she, "you talk to me as if I were a pupil, not a parent! I don't wonder the girls are afraid of you."
"You have a daughter at this school?" asked Austin. He thought of adding, "In one of the younger classes, I'm sure," but decided that she did not deserve it.
"Yes, I am Mrs. Boyd, the mother of that dear, fat Sally—I, who have never had even to exercise in order to keep thin."
Finding her becoming more respectful, he opened the study door and ushered her in. She turned on the threshold and asked, impulsively:
"But how did you happen to become a schoolmaster?"
"It was Sally we were to discuss," he said.
"Ah yes," said his visitor, as if she had not been now twice reproved. "So we were." She sank into a chair and loosened her furs. She was thinking that he really was like the picture of Tristram in the back hall, only that to her, as to the Queen of Sheba on a not too-dissimilar occasion, the half had not been told. "My poor child," she went on, "in spite of her solid exterior, is of a very sensitive nature. She is unusually—"
Austin thought the moment had come for the formula, "We should not expect your child to be commonplace, Mrs. Boyd."
It was just what she needed. She brightened visibly. "Oh, how nice of you to say that!" she said. "And you've put your finger on the difficulty. Poor Sally has all my temperament, but unfortunately she hasn't my—she hasn't my—"
She looked at him wistfully, obviously expecting him to say something equivalent to "your beauty," but the hard-hearted creature remained patiently silent. Her annoyance was natural.
"After all," she said, "I believe that you're nothing but a schoolmaster."
"That's all," he answered, "as far as my pupils and their parents are concerned.'
She stood up, visibly sulking. The interview which had promised so much entertainment had really turned out not much more interesting than her interviews with old Mrs. Bevans used to be. She thought she would try him on the side of his professional pride.
"My son—my son George—thinks I ought to take Sally away."
"I do not think I have the pleasure of your son George's acquaintance,"
"Oh, it's not personal—only you know it is rather unusual for a man of your age—and, may I say, appearance—"
"Since you ask me," said Austin, "I should think it better taste not to,"
"Well, we'll put it all on the score of age, then," she replied, dryly. "But you know you are rather young to run a girls' school."
"It's a question of character, not age," answered Austin. "I've known some old men I should not care to intrust my school to."
"Oh, old men!" exclaimed his visitor, as if she could have written a volume on the subject. There was a pause after this which at first seemed to have come of itself, but was really occasioned by the fact that Austin's eyes had suddenly fallen upon a most unexpected object upon his desk, and he was engaged in wondering how long it had been there. It was a crisp, white gardenia in a slender vase. His concentrated gaze directed hers to the same spot.
"What," she cried, "have you greenhouses? Or no—an admiring pupil—a flower on teacher's desk—an offering at the shrine. Oh no, I don't think I can take Sally away, after all. It's too amusing." She went out, laughing, almost before Austin had roused himself enough to open the door for her.
He drew a long breath. "I hope there won't be any more like that—so early in the morning," he thought; and as if in answer to his wish, a stout, comfortable old lady was ushered in—an old lady with a tendency to chuckle, particularly at her own jokes.
"I've just come to wish you good luck," she said. "I knew your aunt well. Dear Sophy. I'm glad she left the school to you and not to Miss Hayes—"
"Miss Hayes!" cried Austin, to whom this was a new idea.
"Yes, that was her plan. She thought you were too young, Mr. Bevans, and if you won't mind my saying it—too handsome. I couldn't see that youth and beauty ever were a disadvantage to any one, but Sophy thought the girls would be sentimental about you. Well, they're bound to be sentimental about some one, for it's their nature. Better their schoolmaster than a second-rate actor. My Mabel remembers every word you say. She never remembered anything Sophy said. Oh, you'll lose some pupils. That Mrs. McLane is on her way over now to remove her girl. She says it's improper, but she always was abusing the school, and you'll do just as well without her."
But Austin did not want to lose any of his pupils. "If there's any weeding out to be done," he thought, when he was left alone, "I'll do it myself." Besides, he knew how easily at this moment of the school's life a general stampede could be started. No, he didn't want to lose the McLane child, however troublesome she was.
A few minutes later Mrs. McLane swept in—a tall woman, befeathered, bejeweled, and rustling with the richest fabrics.
"Can this be Mr. Bevans?" she asked, in the same tone, but not at all with the same flattering intention, with which Faust inquired about the face that launched a thousand ships.
"Ah, Mrs. McLane, isn't it?" said Austin, almost chattily. "I was hoping you might drop in to say good-by. We shall miss you and—and" (he just glanced at a letter)—and Muriel very much."
"Miss us? I don't understand. Is my daughter no longer an acceptable pupil at the Bevans School?" asked Mrs. McLane, portentously.
"Very acceptable, except for your dissatisfaction with the school."
"I never felt any dissatisfaction," she said.
Austin was good-humoredly airy. "My dear lady," he said, "you forget. On the second and seventh of last January you wrote my aunt that you intended to remove her. On the eighteenth of this month you said that you had never known an institution so deficient—"
Mrs. McLane waved a large gloved hand. "I am open, candid, Mr. Bevans, perhaps over-critical, but I have the best interests of this school at heart. I should never dream of removing my daughter."
Austin shook his head. "Isn't it too bad I should have misunderstood you," he said. "I'm afraid that my telegram has gone to Mr. McFadden—Mr. Lemuel V. McFadden, you know, the cattle king." (He thought the name did credit to his imagination.) "Such an interesting daughter, too, but then we should not expect a McLane to be commonplace."
"Ah, you have always understood her here," said Mrs. McLane. "I can never find another school that will."
"Too bad she has to go," murmured Austin. He let her plead vainly until a new visitor was announced, and then very graciously yielded.
The new-comer was Mr. Browning, the writing-master, a pale, bearded man, who came to complain that the young ladies did not take his course seriously. "I wish you'd speak to them, Mr. Bevans, especially to that little Italian girl; she's the worst; she is a very lawless element in this school."
"Lawless?" cried Austin.
"Yes, sir, lawless. Don't be deceived by that gentle manner. She has great influence with her companions, and she twists Miss Hayes round her finger. And she writes a very bad hand."
"I'll see to it," said Austin.
The writing-master made way for a parent—male, this time. Mr. Doughty, severe and middle-aged.
"I wish to see Mr. Bevans."
"I am Mr. Bevans."
"The head of this school?"
"Yes."
Mr. Doughty bowed with the manner of a man who had seen many strange things in his time. "I suppose I may smoke," he said, biting off the end of his cigar.
"No," said Austin. "I'm sorry, but you may not. I never allow smoking in my office in the morning." It was a rule he had made upon the spur of the moment, but it had just the right effect upon Doughty, who replaced his cigar hastily in his pocket with a docility quite unusual in him.
"I came to speak to you about Helen," he began.
"Ah, Helen," said Austin, as if Helen's problems had oddly enough been the last thought in his mind.
"My daughter," observed Mr. Doughty, "is in many ways a remarkable giri—"
"Well, Mr. Doughty," said Austin, genially, "we should not expect your child to be commonplace."
Mr. Doughty raised a deprecating hand, although, clearly, the remark was not distasteful to him. "No," he said, "you are wrong. What little success I have had in life has been due to luck, not to ability. Take, for example, my acquiring control of the C. T. & W.—"
"How interesting!" murmured Austin, at a time which his sound commercial training told him was the right moment. But he was thinking: a gardenia is not a common, accidental flower which might be picked by the cook's child out on a ramble. A gardenia is a deliberate, artificial, expensive, troublesome— He raised it and smelled the delicious perfume. Why, he wondered, did it make him think of the little princess? Did she wear them? Or was it that the smooth whiteness of her skin—
He broke off, for the time had come to murmur again, "How interesting!"
"Yes, it was as simple as that," said Mr. Doughty. In the excitement of his narrative he had taken out his cigar again, but on receiving a severe look from Austin he hastily replaced it. "I beg your pardon," he said, and Austin forgave him with a kindly glance. "I came to speak about Helen. She tells me the school no longer prepares for college. That is a great disappointment, Mr. Bevans. I wish Helen to go to college. If she cannot be prepared here, I must send her elsewhere." He paused to be pleaded with.
"The school will miss Helen very much," said Austin, making a faint pretense of rising, as if the interview were over. It wasn't, for Mr. Doughty settled back in his chair.
"Helen," he said, "is just the type to profit by a college education."
"I should have said exactly the opposite," answered Austin.
"I consider her intellectual equipment far above the average, though, of course," he added, as one to whom such a thing had never so far happened, "I may be wrong."
"You are not wrong," said her school-master. "She is far above the average—especially in her originality," and he thought of her wonderful story about the Book of Job—"and it is for that reason I do not want to see her run into a mold. What is college education designed for, Mr. Doughty?—the average person—worse than that—the average boy. It standardizes. Now I should like to see Helen study with special masters who would bring out her special powers."
He sketched a wonderful curriculum for her. Mr. Doughty owned he had never considered the matter from this point of view; he had simply assumed that colleges gave the best education at present available. Austin smiled sadly and shook his head at such colossal ignorance, seeming to indicate that his life would be easier if he could submit all parents to an elementary course in the purposes of education. The great man left his study a complete convert to the Bevans theories.
As the door shut behind him, Austin snapped his fingers.
"Bring on more parents," he said, boastfully.
But Fate was not so kind to him. An instant later his aunt's old servant put her head in at the door to say:
"'Tis the little princess, sir, would like a worrud with you."
Austin hesitated. This was against the rules—a good deal more against the rules than Mr. Doughty's innocent attempt to light a cigar. It was not only against the rules, but against his principles—he did not intend the girls to get into the habit of coming to his study. And yet he did want to speak to Elise about this question of her handwriting. While he was debating the matter with himself, his right hand stole out and, without any conscious mandate from its owner, it took the photograph of Susie in its silver frame, and laid it face downward in a drawer of the desk. Then he said to the servant:
"Let her come in."
The next instant she was standing timidly on the threshold. She was wearing a pale-blue sweater, and on it was pinned a crisp, white gardenia.
"May I speak to you, sir?" she just breathed.
It had never occurred to him that she would call him "sir," and for some reason it unnerved him strangely, but his manner betrayed nothing of the kind.
"Yes, Elise," he said. "But I must say I don't like my mornings interrupted by any one but parents."
"But you know I have no parents, sir."
She approached and leaned her hand on his desk; in whiteness it compared favorably with the gardenia, but, unlike the flower, it was shaking. He looked up quickly—yes, the little princess was trembling from top to toe. There was something appealing in her doing a deed that frightened her so much. He wanted to ask her to sit down, but, knowing that a more pedagogic tone could be given to the interview if she stood and he remained seated, he didn't. He merely said, quite coldly:
"What was it you wished to speak to me about?"
"I want to change one of the courses I have elected, please, Mr. Bevans."
He looked up at her again. Was he to hear a fifteenth incredibly plausible story about Sacred Literature, and from her whom he had thought superior!
Her hand trembled more and more, but she said, firmly: "I want to take an extra English course instead of Sacred Literature."
"Sacred Literature is a pretty good thing to know something about," said Austin.
"It's the stupidest course in the school, sir."
"Then why did you elect it?" He looked straight at her, and she looked straight back again.
"Because I thought you were going to give it, sir," she answered.
The truth, being mighty, prevailed. The moment was distinctly Elise's. There was a silence of several seconds before he thought of the right thing to say.
"Why did you assume that I would make it more interesting than Miss Simmons does?"
She smiled, showing a flash of very small white teeth. "Anybody would, sir," she returned.
Austin made a grab at his professional manner as a man makes a grab at his hat in a high wind, and caught it in time.
"You must learn to take an interest in the subjects you study, irrespective of the teacher's personality, Elise," he said.
"I'll remember that—when I get to college."
"To college, Elise? Surely you know that neither I nor your grandfather approves of your going to college."
Oh, Mr. Bevans, don't interfere with my going to college. I want to so much. You have to have degrees, nowadays, to do anything in the world, and school, even if you work hard, isn't the same. Miss Hayes says—"
"This is a question about which Miss Hayes and I disagree."
"Oh, I know," she wailed. "And it's so dreadful when the two people you respect most in the world disagree about what you ought to do."
Austin was silent. His self-confidence, which soared in the face of opposition, sank before praise. Why in thunder should this little girl respect him, and was he wise, was he even honest in the advice he was giving her? In his hesitation, almost unconsciously, he drew toward him the vase holding the gardenia, and slowly breathed in its intoxicating perfume. This was too much for the little princess. She drew back, grew slowly, conspicuously, splendidly crimson, and then, evidently feeling that the situation had passed far beyond her powers, she retreated hastily to the door.
But there, with her hand actually on the knob, she made a last stand.
"It isn't," she said, gently, "as if you and grandfather could really change anything, you know. You just make it harder for me."
This was obviously rebellion, with however gentle a motion the red flag was waved. Austin sprang to his feet and approached her almost menacingly. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"I mean, I mean—" she began; but at this moment the door, against which she was lightly leaning the tip of her shoulder, was quickly opened from without, and she was precipitated into Austin's arms—or rather she was completely thrown off her balance and he, standing near her, could do no less than keep her on her feet. As a matter of cold fact, he did a little more; there was a second—an unnecessary second—when his hand remained about her shoulder. It seemed a very long second to the new-comer, who turned out to be Mr. Johns's accountant.
The new accountant was George Boyd. 
Austin sprang to his feet and approached her almost menacingly. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.