Eleanor Watson wanted to join Jim in New York. He was sure of being there for several months, he wrote her, and equally sure of being sent off to “some miserable hole” in the early spring.
“Beating the firm’s time-limit on Morton Hall,” he wrote, “is about the unluckiest thing I ever did. They’ve written me down for a hustler, and slated me for all the forlorn hopes. Remind Betty that she owes me a good long letter for that.”
The thing that kept Eleanor at Harding was of course the devotion of the Terrible Ten to her and to education under her auspices. In vain she had introduced other story-tellers; the evenings that she stayed away to give Mr. Thayer’s most promising candidates a trial were tumultuous revolts, or, after she had patiently explained to the class how unhappy their disorderly conduct made her, spiritless sessions, endured because the smouldering fire in Rafael’s eyes commanded outward submission from the Ten.
“But if you really leave I’m afraid they’ll all backslide again,” said Mr. Thayer, “and you see they’re on probation now to the very end of their course. Did Rafael tell you that he’d had another raise? That boy does the work of two men, in spite of his bad hand—runs the most difficult machine in the factory, and makes repairs that we used to have to get a man up from Boston to attend to.”
“How old is he?” asked Eleanor idly.
“Eighteen, he thinks. They’re all older than they look or act.”
Eleanor sighed. “They won’t be able to meet the reading requirements of the factory law for six weeks yet, and they ought to be induced to keep on all winter—certainly the ones who are bright enough at their work to have any future before them. But it does seem absurd for me to stay on here just because ten young Italians listen to my stories and eat my peanuts.”
“And appreciate the tact and understanding that you bestow so generously, mixed with the peanuts and the stories,” added Mr. Thayer soberly.
That night Eleanor went to Mr. Thayer’s office after the class to have one more consultation with him about its future. When she came back for her coat and hat a stealthy figure slipped past her in the hall.