Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, as if the air did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham was speaking.  The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself of these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone, thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large, white-bellied, pickled cucumbers.  He spoke deliberately, as if weighing his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time for a mental accompaniment with variations, accented by certain bodily changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham’s observation.  First there was a feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley spoken of like a dumb working animal.  That sent the blood up into his cheeks.  Then the slur upon her probable want of force—­her incapacity, who made the character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits—­sent a thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham, to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over backwards all of a sudden.  This would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed off and the muscles softened again.  Then came that state of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the eyes grow moist like a woman’s, and there is also a great boiling-up of objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabulary, so that Prudence and Propriety and all the other pious P’s have to jump upon the lid of speech to keep them from boiling over into fierce articulation.  All this was internal, chiefly, and of course not recognized by Mr. Silas Peckham.  The idea, that any full-grown, sensible man should have any other notion than that of getting the most work for the least money out of his assistants, had never suggested itself to him.

Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled down, in the period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these words in his thin, shallow whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses.  What was the use of losing his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn too many?

“No doubt, Mr. Peckham,” he said, in a grave, calm voice, “there is a great deal of work to be done in the school; but perhaps we can distribute the duties a little more evenly after a time.  I shall look over the girls’ themes myself, after this week.  Perhaps there will be some other parts of her labor that I can take on myself.  We can arrange a new programme of studies and recitations.”