As she cleaned the nails, one eye on the grimly relentless clock, the ideas flicked through her mind like quick, darting flames.  “What mediaeval nonsense we do stuff into the school-children’s head.  What an infamous advantage we take of the darlings’ trust in us and their docility to our purposes!  My dear little daughter with her bright face of desire-to-do-her-best!  What wretched chaff she is getting for that quick, imaginative brain of hers!  It’s not so bad for Paul, but . . . oh, even for him what nonsense!  Rules of grammar, names of figures of speech . . . stuff left over from scholastic hair-splitting!  And the tributaries of rivers . . . !” She glanced up for an instant and was struck into remorse by the tranquil expression of peace in the little girl’s clear eyes, bent affectionately on her mother.  “Oh, my poor, darling little daughter,” she thought, “how can you trust anything in this weak and wicked world as you trust your broken reed of a mother?  I don’t know, dear child, any more than you do, where we are going, nor how we are going to get there.  We are just stumbling along, your father and I, as best we can, dragging you and your brothers along with us.  And all we can do for you, or for each other, is to love you and . . .”

Elly withdrew her hand.  “There, Mother, I know they’re clean enough now.  I’m afraid I’ll be late if I don’t go.  And you know she scolds like everything if anybody’s late.”  She repeated in a rapid murmur, “The tributaries of the Delaware on the left bank are . . .”

Her mother’s mind went back with a jerk to the question of river-tributaries.  “And what’s the use of cramming her memory with facts she could find in three minutes in any Atlas if by any strange chance she should ever ever need to know about the tributaries of the Delaware.  As well set her to learning the first page of the Telephone Directory!  Why don’t I do the honest thing by her and say to her that all that is poppy-cock?”

* * * * *

An inner dialogue flashed out, lunge, parry, riposte, like rapier blades at play.  “Because if I told her it is nonsense, that would undermine her faith in her teacher and her respect for her.”

“But why should she respect her teacher if her teacher does not deserve that sort of respect?  Ought even a little child to respect anything or anybody merely because of a position of authority and not because of intrinsic worth?  No, of course not.”

“Oh, you know that’s only wild talk.  Of course you couldn’t send the child to school, and keep her under her teacher, unless you preserve the form of upholding the teacher’s authority.”

“Yes, but in Heaven’s name, why do we send her to school?  She could learn twenty times more, anywhere else.”

“Because sending her to school keeps her in touch with other children, with her fellow-beings, keeps her from being ‘queer’ or different.  She might suffer from it as she grew up, might desire more than anything in the world to be like others.”