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“So it’s you that’s taking Miss Blakeley’s place. You have no idea how badly we feel about her resigning. I went to school to her, my father and mother went to school to her. I had hoped all my children would go to her. She was a wonderful teacher, a beautiful character. You look pretty young; you haven’t had much experience, have you?”

I was not long in learning that the devotion of the community to Miss Blakeley was deserved. The village was right in honoring her, in mourning her. It no doubt felt a certain satisfaction in letting me know at the start it in no way regarded me as an adequate substitute. Its insistence was such that, before the end of my first fortnight, I was ready to resign.

My morale would hardly have been so quickly shaken if I had not at once discovered to my consternation that there was an important part of my duties which was in danger of proving too much for me. The worst of it was that it concerned the largest block of pupils in an institution where every pupil counted, where Mr. Lee regarded it as of vital importance that every pupil be given what he wanted. Here he advertised you could prepare for college, here you could have special advanced work in anything you wanted. And Mr. Lee was right if the seminary was to live as a cog in the country’s educational wheel.