Beside her, Anne in her blue serge felt clumsy and common. She knew that she ought not to feel that way, but she did. She would have told her scholars that it was not clothes that made the man, or dress the woman. But then she told her scholars many things that were right and good. She tried herself to be as right and good as her theories. But it was not always possible. It was not possible at this moment.
"What brought you here?" Eve persisted.
"I teach school. I came in September."
"What do you teach?"
"Everything. We are not graded."
"I hope you teach them to be honest with themselves."
"I am not sure that I know what you mean?"
"Don't let them pretend to be something that they are not. That's why so many people fail. They reach too high, and fall. That's what Nancy Brooks is doing to Richard. She is making him reach too high."
She laughed as she bent above her needle. "I fancy you are not interested in that. But I can't think of anything but—the waste of it. I hope you will all be so healthy that you won't need him, and then he will have to come back to New York."
"I don't see how anybody could leave New York. Not to come down here." Anne drew a quick breath.