But at last he gave it up and went in, putting it aside carelessly as if it were but a trifle after all. The girl was stubborn but she would have to come back pretty soon, and the lesson would only do her good. As for the neighbors, they must prepare a story that would offset anything she might tell them. And what did the neighbors matter anyway? This wasn’t the only place in the world. They could sell the house and move where Joyce had no friends, then there would be no trouble. Joyce would have to stick to them, for she had no way of earning money anywhere else. The idea of teaching school was fool nonsense. He wouldn’t think of allowing it. She would always be taking on airs even if she paid board, and then they would get no work out of her, and she would not be pleasant to have around. With this reflection he fell asleep, convinced that Joyce would be found safe and sound and sane on the doorstep in the morning. * * * * * About this time the new young superintendent of the high school who was taking the place of the regular superintendent while he was abroad for six months studying, settled down in his one comfortable chair in his boarding house room with a bundle of examination papers to look over. This was not his work, but the two teachers who would ordinarily have done it were both temporarily disabled, one down with the grip and the other away at a funeral, and since the averages must be ready before commencement he had volunteered to mark these papers. It was late and he was tired, for there had been a special meeting of the school board to deal with a matter connected with the new addition to the school building, and also to arrange to supply the place of a teacher who had suddenly decided to get married instead of continuing to teach. There had been much discussion about both matters and he had been greatly annoyed at the prospect of one young woman who had been suggested to fill the vacancy. She was of the so-called flapper variety and seemed to him to have no idea of serious work. She had been in his classes for the last six weeks, and he became more disgusted with her every time he saw her. The idea of her as a colleague was not pleasant. He settled to his papers with a frown that portended no good to the poor victims whose fate he was settling by the marks of his blue pencil. He marched through the papers, paragraph after paragraph, question after question, marking them ruthlessly. Misspelled words, how they got on his nerves! He drew sharp blue lines like little swords through them, and wrote caustic foot-notes on the corners of the pages. The young aspirants for graduation who received them in the morning would quiver when they read them and gather in groups to cast anathemas at him.