To Mr. Fenton the young girl had made an unconscious appeal. Lonely and feeling herself out of place in a new and strange environment, she appeared like a gay little tropical bird or flower transferred to a harsher environment. When he and Tory became friends the coldness of the old maid and old bachelor establishment changed to a pleasanter warmth.
Introduced to her girl friends, Mr. Fenton had become a member of their Scout Council. But not until this summer had he developed into their chief mentor, and fairy godfather.
Now to his surprise, added to his other unsought honors, he found himself the director of the Greek pageant, one of the performers as well, and far more popular with his fellow-players than he yet appreciated.
Daily they were coming to him with their problems and their ambitions. As yet their confidences related only to the approaching performance.
Lance’s question was more general than any other that had been propounded. While Mr. Fenton was replying he looked at Lance with more interest than he had felt in the boy before.
If no one else understood what he was endeavoring to make plain, he believed that Tory and Lance would catch the import of his words.
“Among the nations the Greeks are rarely fortunate,” Mr. Fenton began. “They left us such inheritances that we have remembered their great days; with other nations we are too apt to recall the years of their decay, their mistakes.
“Perhaps one reason for this is that the Greeks were our forefathers, a branch of the Aryan-speaking peoples who in the faint twilight of early history, a nomadic, wandering people, moved southward, and combined with the inhabitants of Crete. This gives us the story of the Odyssey, one of the two great Greek poems, but more filled with legend than the story of the Iliad, which is the siege of Troy.”
Mr. Fenton paused.
“I am not tiring you too much? Still I must go on. We must try as far as we can to understand what we have undertaken to present to others. And I have not yet told you what I mean by the Greek spirit.