Stewart walked slowly, meditating deeply, went through the opening in the rail, sat down at his desk and fumbled in a drawer and sought deeply under many papers. He brought out a book, a worn volume.
Calvin Dow, daring to peer more closely than Miss Bunker or Mac Tavish had the courage to venture, noted that the place to which Morrison opened was marked by a slip of paper, a snapshot photograph.
"Miss Bunker!" called the master. "A memo.!"
She came with her note-book and sat at the lid of the desk, facing him.
"His resignation, I tell ye," whispered Mac Tavish. "I ken the look o' detar-rmination!"
"I want it typed on a narrow strip that I can slip into my pocketbook," stated Stewart. Then, to all appearances entirely unconcerned with the listening veterans, he dictated:
"Meanwhile I was thinking of my first love,
As I had not been thinking of aught for years.
Till over my eyes there began to move
Something that felt like tears."
Mac Tavish bent on Dow a wild look and swapped with the old pensioner of the Morrisons a stare of amazement for one of bewildered concern.
"I thought of the dress that she wore last time
When we stood 'neath the cypress-tree together
In that lost land, in that soft clime,
In the crimson evening weather.
"Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot)
And her warm white neck in its golden chain,
And her full, soft hair, just tied in a knot,
And falling loose again.