Miss Jean Byrne was a graceful young woman whose manner breathed unusual freshness. Her oval face possessed a certain nun-like beauty, chiefly by reason of her deep hazel eyes, quiet emblems of a devotional disposition. Her good color, however, and an indulgent fulness of lips, saved her face from an ultra-spirituality and her low, contralto laughter neutralized a first impression of asceticism. Mauney had never noticed that she was really quite a large woman, although he had been a pupil in her school for two years.
“How goes it, Mauney?” she asked, having noticed an unwonted sadness in his face, usually so bright.
“Not too badly. I’m enjoying that book you lent me,” he replied, with a smile.
“Come now—something’s wrong,” she said, searching his face as they drove along together.
“I’m feeling sore to-day,” he admitted, striking the wheel with his whip. “My father sold my pony to the preacher, and I’m not going to forgive him. It was my pony. He hadn’t any right to sell it.”
After a pause he turned and looked into her eyes. “I guess we all have our little troubles, Miss Byrne, eh?”
She understood him. In fact Miss Byrne held him more intimately in her quiet thoughts than he surmised, and more intimately than their ages and contact would have explained. She had often stood over him, during his last term, observing the mould of his shoulders under his loose, flannel shirt, instead of the book on his desk. She had often lost the thread of her instructions in the unconscious light of his blue-eyed day-dreaming. Then, too, his English compositions had displayed such merit that she had marvelled at his ability, and wondered whether environment were really as strong an influence as heredity in forming a pupil’s mind. Every teacher who is fortunate has one pupil who becomes the oasis in the daily desert of thankless toil, the visible reward of seeds sown in darkness. Mauney Bard was easily her oasis and reward. She always maintained that there were only two classes of pupils who impressed their teacher, the noisy, empty ones and the “dog” kind. The canine qualities she meant were silent faithfulness and undemonstrative affection.
Her wistful eyes softened with delicate sympathy as she glanced at his clean profile, and she thought of a sculptor’s marble. But whenever he turned toward her, it was the trusting simplicity of a youth talking with his mother. Mother! It was forced upon her, so that her breast warmed with medleys of sensation.
“Oh, what’s wrong with your hand?” she asked.