This boy became extraordinarily attractive to an older woman who was one of our number, who was solitary and abstracted, and of an intense seriousness of devotion to her work.  It was evident both that she felt his charm intensely and that her disposition was wholly alien to the disposition of the boy himself.  In fact, she simply bored him.  He took all that he did lightly, and achieved by an intense momentary concentration what she could only achieve by slow reflection.  This devotion had in it something that was strangely pathetic, because it took the form in her of making her wish to conciliate the boy’s admiration, by treating thoughts and ideas with a lightness and a humour to which she could by no means attain, and which made things worse rather than better, because she could read so easily, in the thoughts of others, the impression that she was attempting a handling of topics which she could not in the least accomplish.  But advice was useless.  There it was, the old, fierce, constraining attraction of love, as it had been of old, making havoc of comfortable arrangements, attempting the impossible; and yet one knew that she would gain by the process, that she was opening a door in her heart that had hitherto been closed, and learning a largeness of view and sympathy in the process.  Her fault had ever been, no doubt, to estimate slow and accurate methods too highly, and to believe that all was insecure and untrustworthy that was not painfully accumulated.  Now she saw that genius could accomplish without effort or trouble what no amount of homely energy could effect, and a new horizon was unveiled to her.  But on the boy it did not seem to have the right result.  He might have learned to extend his sympathy to a nature so dumb and plodding; and this coldness of his called down a rebuke of what seemed almost undue sternness from one of our teachers.  It was not given in my presence, but the boy, bewildered by the severity which he did not anticipate, coupled indeed with a hint that he must be prepared, if he could not exhibit a more elastic sympathy, to have his course suspended in favour of some more simple discipline, told me the whole matter.  “What am I to do?” he said.  “I cannot care for Barbara; her whole nature upsets me and revolts me.  I know she is very good and all that, but I simply am not myself when she is by; it is like taking a run with a tortoise!”

“Well,” I said, “no one expects you to give up all your time to taking tortoises for runs; but I suppose that tortoises have their rights, and must not be jerked along on their backs, like a sledge.”

“Oh,” said he, “you are all against me, I know; and I am not sure that this place is not rather too solemn for me.  What is the good of being wiser than the aged, if one has more commandments to keep?”

Things, however, settled down in time.  Barbara, I think, must have been taken to task as well, because she gave up her attempts at wit; and the end of it was that a quiet friendship sprang up between the incongruous pair, like that between a wayward young brother and a plain, kindly, and elderly sister, of a very fine and chivalrous kind.