What, then, did Uncle Charlie mean by calling Professor Koenig a classic?
“Just what does it mean, exactly—classic?” persisted Emmy Lou.
“That which we are apt to put on the shelf,” said Uncle Charlie.
Oh—Emmy Lou had thought he was talking about Professor Koenig; he meant the text-books—she understood now, of course.
But the old books went and the new ones came, and Miss Kilrain came with them.
She came in mincingly on the balls of her feet the opening day of school, and took her place on the rostrum of the chapel with The Faculty. Once one would have said with “the teachers,” but in the High School one knew them as The Faculty. Miss Kilrain took her place with them, but she was not of them; the High School populace, gazing up from the groundling’s point of view, in serried ranks below, felt that. It was as though The Faculty closed in upon themselves and left Miss Kilrain, with her Modern Methods, outside and alone.
But Miss Kilrain showed a proper spirit, and proceeded to form her intimacies elsewhere; Miss Kilrain grew quite intimate and friendly with certain of the girls.
And now her name had come up for honorary membership in the Platonian Society.
“We’ve always extended it to The Faculty,” a member reminded them.
“Besides, she won’t bother us,” remarked another. “They never come.”