“I hope—­” she began.

“Oh, you needn’t worry, Mrs. Bell.  It’s nothing about her conduct, and it’s nothing about her school work.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Mrs. Bell, as if she had expected it would be.  “But I know she’s bad at figures.  The child can’t help that, though; she gets it from me.  I think I ought to ask you to be lenient with her on that account.”

“I have nothing to do with the mathematical branches, Mrs, Bell.  I teach only English to the senior classes.  But I haven’t heard Mr. Jackson complain of Elfrida at all.”  Feeling that she could no longer keep her errand at arm’s length, Miss Kimpsey desperately closed with it.  “I’ve come—­I hope you won’t mind—­Mrs. Bell, Elfrida has been quoting Rousseau in her compositions, and I thought you’d like to know.”

“In the original?” asked Mrs. Bell, with interest.  “I didn’t think her French was advanced enough for that.”

“No, from a translation,” Miss Kimpsey replied.  “Her sentence ran:  ’As the gifted Jean Jacques Rousseau told the world in his “Confessions"’—­I forget the rest.  That was the part that struck me most.  She had evidently been reading the works of Rousseau.”

“Very likely.  Elfrida has her own subscription at the library,” Mrs. Bell said speculatively.  “It shows a taste in reading beyond her years, doesn’t it, Miss Kimpsey?  The child is only fifteen.”

“Well, I’ve never read Rousseau,” the little teacher stated definitely.  “Isn’t he—­atheistical, Mrs. Bell, and improper every way?”

Mrs. Bell raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lips at the severity of this ignorant condemnation.  “He was a genius, Miss Kimpsey—­rather I should say he is, for genius cannot die.  He is much thought of in France.  People there make a little shrine of the house he occupied with Madame Warens, you know.”

“Oh!” returned Miss Kimpsey, “French people.”

“Yes.  The French are peculiarly happy in the way they sanctify genius,” said Mrs. Bell vaguely, with a feeling that she was wasting a really valuable idea.

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Bell.  I’d always heard you entertained about as liberal views as there were going on any subject, but I didn’t expect they embraced Rousseau.”  Miss Kimpsey spoke quite meekly.  “I know we live in an age of progress, but I guess I’m not as progressive as some.”

“Many will stay behind,” interrupted Mrs. Bell impartially, “but many more will advance.”

“And I thought maybe Elfrida had been reading that author without your knowledge or approval, and that perhaps you’d like to know.”

“I neither approve nor disapprove,” said Mrs. Bell, poising her elbow on the table, her chin upon her hand, and her judgment, as it were, upon her chin.  “I think her mind ought to develop along the lines that nature intended; I think nature is wiser than I am”—­there was an effect of condescending explanation here—­“and I don’t feel justified in interfering.  I may be wrong—­”