CHAPTER XIV
ALL day long the little boy was with the School-teacher. The child and the dog watched for the man to come out of the forest in the morning. When the dog barked, the little boy would say:
“Nim, see Teacher.”
The woman standing before the door watched for the three of them to come out of the forest in the evening. She listened for the laughter, the voices, the barking of the dog. The sense of perfect understanding among the three of them was to her a perpetual wonder. The child had only a few words, the dog had none. How could the man know so well, what they meant? It was a wonder that she turned about, and at last, out of the deeps of her own feelings, she got an answer that she held to.
“If you love a thing enough, it's goin' to understand you.”
The relation of the School-teacher to this tiniest child was also that of his relation to every other one. The sense of it spread throughout the school. This school became a family. What the cheerless home withheld, it gave. No child could have told one what that was.
The teacher understood him, would have been the answer.
The School-teacher required no built-up explanations, he required no justification of one's act by the unfamiliar standards of another, he required no trick, no artifice, no pretending, to get on with.
To the question, “What is he like?” a little boy had answered, “Why, just like me.”
For some time there had been a secret in the school.