At a late hour the guests took their leave. But Ralph, lingering after the others had left, talked over the party with Mary and her mother, for the former was too excited to want the evening to end. “How did you like the girls?” Mary inquired, eagerly. And just then Mrs. Turner found an excuse to leave the room. “Very much, little cousin. They’re a jolly lot of youngsters. And I’m quite struck with one of them.” “Oh, I knew you would be. Cecily, of course!” “Cecily! O, no!” His emphasis was expressive. “Not Cecily?” Mary was bewildered. “That would-be chorus girl with come-hither eyes?” he demanded, and then, seeing her stricken face, added hurriedly, “But maybe she’s a special friend of yours.” “Oh, no,—that is,—not so very. But she’s awfully popular.” “With only one kind of boys, then, and that’s not the sort I’d like to see you running round with, cousin mine. The girl that took my eye was—her name was—Evelyn. She’s a peach. Ask me over some time again when she’s here, will you?” Mary nodded a little uncertainly, and then promised. “Mother,” she said, wonderingly, as Mrs. Turner entered the room, “Ralph likes Evelyn. And she certainly did look pretty tonight. I’m—crazy about her myself!” And as Mrs. Turner squeezed her nephew’s hand, she felt somehow that a new name was about to be substituted for “Cecily” in Mary’s vocabulary. Miss Canfield listened attentively to the mother’s report of the party and of Mary’s drift into better companionship and naturally lent aid to the scheme in a dozen little ways—assignments of team work, comments to Mary on certain lovely qualities in Evelyn and her type of girl, recommendation of books and magazine articles, etc. Mother and teacher accomplished an important piece of work by this campaign in which they substituted, in the unformed mind of a school girl, a correct model of young womanhood in place of a degraded type. 4. Falling in Love with the Teacher When pupils fall in love with their teachers, the problem is not nearly so serious as the same event would be out of school, for the reason that every normal tradition of school relations is against such a state of affairs. The teacher stands, as is said so often, _in loco parentis_; and if teachers are fit to bear this relation to their pupils, they can, and will, easily handle any tendencies toward too intimate relations with their pupils. The treatment for a pupil who develops too ardent an admiration for a teacher is based upon the process of de-personalizing the relations between them; for almost always it will be found that when pupils have fallen in love with their teachers, it is because, purposely or unconsciously, the relations have been too personal.