“Did you say her name was Radway? Joyce Radway? There could scarcely be two of that name, I should think. It is rather an unusual name. If it’s the Miss Radway I know, I should say have her by all means. I’ve been hunting for her for the last two months, only gave it up because I was called here. Did she come from Meadow Brook, do you happen to know?”
“Why, I don’t know, I’m sure. I didn’t ask about that. But I can find out. Suppose I go and bring her!”
“Do,” said the professor. “I’d like to see if she is the same one. She certainly gave promise of being a rare mind. I had the pleasure of looking over her examination papers—”
But Powers had already seized his hat and gone out the door. There was a special reason why he wanted to “put one over” on the men who were sponsoring the other candidates, and he didn’t mean to lose a single chance. He went at once to the school telephone and called up Mrs. Bryant, asking her to ask Miss Radway to be ready to come back with him.
And so it was that Joyce, summoned from her preparation of the Bible-school lesson for the next day, hurried into a pretty little blue voile she had just finished and was ready when Mr. Powers arrived to go before the School Board.
In a few minutes, she stood, at last, before Professor Harrington, who had wasted many precious hours of his time, to say nothing of telephone charges and letters, trying to locate this special teacher, and when she finally stood before him he looked into her clear blue eyes and said to himself, “That’s the girl I want.” And aloud, to the School Board, he said gravely:
“I feel sure, from what I know of Miss Radway’s work, that she is eminently fitted to teach in our school.”
Joyce lifted astonished eyes to the fine, scholarly face and didn’t in the least recognize him. But she had sense enough left in spite of her perturbation not to say so, and in a few minutes she was dismissed from the room and the vote was carried in her favor.
The fact was, every man of them was prepossessed in her favor so soon as he looked into her eyes, and the three bobbed-haired candidates hadn’t a chance, with her on the spot.
“But I thought she was a cook!” said one wife when her husband got home from the School Board meeting and told her about the election of the new teacher. “Mrs. Powers told me she got dinner for her one night when she had company.”