‘Because,’ said Miss Puddleton as she pinned the thing up, ‘even my brain won’t stand your complete lack of method, it’s infectious; this time-sheet is my anti-toxin, so please don’t tear it to pieces!’
Mathematics and algebra, Latin and Greek, Roman history, Greek history, geometry, botany, they reduced Stephen’s mind to a species of beehive in which every bee buzzed on the least provocation. She would gaze at Miss Puddleton in a kind of amazement; that tiny, square box to hold all this grim knowledge! And seeing that gaze Miss Puddleton would smile her most warm, charming smile, and would say as she did so:
‘Yes, I know—but it’s only the first effort, Stephen; presently your mind will get neat like the schoolroom, and then you’ll be able to find what you want without all this rummaging and bother.’
But her tasks being over, Stephen must often slip away to visit Raftery in the stables: ‘Oh, Raftery, I’m hating it so!’ she would tell him. ‘I feel like you’d feel if I put you in harness—hard wooden shafts and a kicking strap, Raftery—but my darling, I’d never put you into harness!’
And Raftery would hardly know what he should answer, since all human creatures, so far as he knew them, must run between shafts—God-like though they were, they undoubtedly had to run between shafts. . . .
Nothing but Stephen’s great love for her father helped her to endure the first six months of learning—that and her own stubborn, arrogant will that made her hate to be beaten. She would swing clubs and dumb-bells in a kind of fury, consoling herself with the thought of her muscles, and, finding her at it, Miss Puddleton had laughed.
‘You must feel that your teacher’s some sort of midge, Stephen—a tiresome midge that you want to brush off!’
Then Stephen had laughed too: ‘Well, you are little, Puddle—oh, I’m sorry—’
‘I don’t mind,’ Miss Puddleton had told her; ‘call me Puddle if you like, it’s all one to me.’ After which Miss Puddleton disappeared somehow, and Puddle took her place in the household.
An insignificant creature this Puddle, yet at moments unmistakably self-assertive. Always willing to help in domestic affairs, such as balancing Anna’s chaotic account books, or making out library lists for Jackson’s, she was nevertheless very guardful of her rights, very quick to assert and maintain her position. Puddle knew what she wanted and saw that she got it, both in and out of the schoolroom. Yet every one liked her; she took what she gave and she gave what she took, yes, but sometimes she gave just a little bit more—and that little bit more is the whole art of teaching, the whole art of living, in fact, and Miss Puddleton knew it. Thus gradually, oh, very gradually at first, she wore down her pupil’s unconscious resistance. With small, dexterous fingers she caught Stephen’s brain, and she stroked it and modelled it after her own fashion. She talked to that brain and showed it new pictures; she gave it new thoughts, new hopes and ambitions; she made it feel certain and proud of achievement. Nor did she belittle Stephen’s muscles in the process, never once did Puddle make game of the athlete, never once did she show by so much as the twitch of an eyelid that she had her own thoughts about her pupil. She appeared to take Stephen as a matter of course, nothing surprised or even amused her it seemed, and Stephen grew quite at ease with her.