It was Friday, commonly a late day for Mary, but you could count on nothing on such a day as this. However, when he had dashed into the great building and up the two tall stairways, there sat the late assistant principal in her little office, hard at work before a regular man's desk. She was discovered deep in the sorting of papers, and swung around at his step with a start and a smile.
"Good-afternoon!—and excuse the mess, please! The notice to move caught me a little unawares, you see.—Don't look so solemn, please!"
Whatever emotions she might have wrestled with last night, when her light shone so bright over the park, it was clear that Mary Wing had put them all down to front the world to-day. Neither did she seem embarrassed by any memories of recent conversations on these topics, of hints dropped and too firmly repulsed. Her manner, her sensitive fine face, were as composed as ever.
It may be that this, at the outset, was slightly upsetting to Charles, who was himself not composed at all.
He scooped a pile of "The New School" from a chair and sat with an elbow upon the writing-leaf of her masculine desk. Dumping papers from pigeon-holes, Mary calmly explained how complete was her overthrow. Senff, who was known as Mysinger's "personal representative" on the Board, had preferred the charges, she said, recommending her outright dismissal from the schools. The train had been carefully laid; it appeared that Mary had received an official warning from the Superintendent—an obliging man, elderly and weak, whom Mysinger meant to succeed before long—all of two weeks ago. Beyond influence and politication, much weight was attached to the simple fact that Mysinger, as Mary's immediate associate and superior, felt this persistent antipathy toward her. All the same, the Board had debated the case a full hour.
"Dangerous ideas," she summarized. "I'm not a suitable person to have authority over the education of—young women and men."
"What they said about Socrates, too—"
"Yes, but I don't want a monument after I'm dead!"
She laughed, without self-consciousness, and said: "Oh, if I'd tried, of course, I couldn't have put a better club into Mr. Mysinger's hands. Ideas!—I'm really amazed I wasn't electrocuted on the spot. Of course it isn't as if I were a man, you see, with a right to have ideas. That's my real fault, from the beginning—at least with Mysinger. I'm a woman, and so should never have been suffered 'to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.' Dear St. Paul!"
It was rare to find bitterness in Mary. Charles asked hastily if there had been much talk about the building to-day. She said that the School had been buzzing with it.