"Just what is a classic?" Emmy Lou had asked, looking up from the paper. Uncle Charlie had previously been reading it himself. "Professor Koenig is one," said he. Professor Koenig was little, his beard was grizzled, and the dome of his head was bald. He wore gold spectacles, and he didn't always hear, at which times he would bend his head sideways and peer through his glasses. "Hey?" Professor Koenig would say. But he knew, one felt that he knew, and that he was making his classes know, too. One was conscious of something definite behind Professor Koenig's way of closing the book over one forefinger and tapping upon it with the other. It was a purpose. What, then, did Uncle Charlie mean by calling Professor Koenig a classic? "Just what does it mean, exactly--classic?" persisted Emmy Lou. "That which we are apt to put on the shelf," said Uncle Charlie. Oh--Emmy Lou had thought he was talking about Professor Koenig; he meant the text-books--she understood now, of course. But the old books went and the new ones came, and Miss Kilrain came with them. She came in mincingly on the balls of her feet the opening day of school, and took her place on the rostrum of the chapel with The Faculty. Once one would have said with "the teachers," but in the High School one knew them as The Faculty. Miss Kilrain took her place with them, but she was not of them; the High School populace, gazing up from the groundling's point of view, in serried ranks below, felt that. It was as though The Faculty closed in upon themselves and left Miss Kilrain, with her Modern Methods, outside and alone. But Miss Kilrain showed a proper spirit, and proceeded to form her intimacies elsewhere; Miss Kilrain grew quite intimate and friendly with certain of the girls. And now her name had come up for honorary membership in the Platonian Society. "We've always extended it to The Faculty," a member reminded them. "Besides, she won't bother us," remarked another. "They never come." Miss Kilrain was accorded the honour. But she surprised them. She did come; she came tripping up on the balls of her feet the very next Friday. They heard her deprecating little cough as she came up the stairs. When one was little, one had played "Let's pretend." But in the full illusion of the playing, if grown-up people had appeared, the play stopped--short. It was like that, now--the silence. "Oh," said Miss Kilrain, in the doorway, "go on, or I'll go away." They went on lamely enough, but they never went on again. Miss Kilrain, ever after, went on for them, and perforce, they followed. But to-day they went on. The secretary had been reading a communication. It was from the Literary Society of the Boy's High School, proposing a debate between the two; it was signed by the secretary, who chanced to be a boy whose name was Chester. Miss MacLauren, in spite of herself, grew red; she had been talking about the Platonians and their debates with him quite recently.