This time, however, she was mistaken; he returned exactly the same as he had gone away, only she noticed the first time that she talked to him that he was a little bitter against the teachers: "ungrateful asses," he called them. He had taught them more than it was in the power of any human being to do who had not travelled as he had done, and had his experience and reading; he would have nothing to do with them. He annoyed them by his elegant courtliness. This amused him; he was really dreadful with them. He resumed his teaching, with the exception of the singing, which was given over to Nora, who was now both pupil and teacher. He declared that she possessed the gift of teaching in the highest degree. "Perhaps he could interest himself in the school again," thought Karl, "if there were a new staff of teachers." He spoke of this to Fru Rendalen. She would try to find out, and began by talking to Tomas about the observatory which they had arranged in a small way in the tower. They had been obliged to stop for want of money. By next summer she hoped to have the means to set it going. "God knows where I shall be then," he answered, and hurried away. "If I were to speak plainly to the teachers," thought his indefatigable mother, "if I could induce them to beg his pardon." She assembled them one day just before Christmas, and told them, betraying emotion as she did so, that her son had repeatedly let fall remarks which showed that he intended to go away. There was a movement of dismay. Fröken Lote, on whom all eyes were fixed, at last broke the silence. She had not meant it in that way, she had only meant--she had really not meant anything--but she was so dreadfully nervous. She thought he was not pleased with her. The drawing and needle-work mistress, a clear-headed, tall, fair woman, coloured furiously. The Spenser method of drawing which Rendalen had introduced was not clear to begin with, she said, but he was always beyond her; but for all that she ought not to have said anything, indeed she ought not. She began to cry. The teachers all protested that they felt the greatest gratitude; he had, of course, seen and heard so much on every subject, but it was most embarrassing that he treated them like dirt beneath his feet. Fru Rendalen took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again; pulled them off again, rubbed them, and put them on. Well then, Miss Hall would say what was the matter. It was that he treated everything and everybody so unevenly. This made the teachers uncertain, and destroyed the children's sense of justice, and that was almost the greatest loss that a child could sustain. She would so gladly have spoken to Rendalen, said the little American, but he made himself so unapproachable. To-day, too, she felt nervous. This destroyed Fru Rendalen's plan; she did not know what to answer. All further negotiations were meanwhile broken off.