She had always been a poor correspondent. She had never enjoyed writing before, but now the idea of pouring herself out--or rather not herself, but her observation of a situation in which he was vitally interested--delighted her. All of us, it has been said, can write well if we have something interesting to say. What Pearl had to say could not fail to be interesting to the man she was writing to. There was no motive for caution. At last she had found a man with whom she could be candid and natural. Late into the night the sound of a portable typewriter could be heard ticking from the room of the new governess. It was not easy to put a routine into operation in the Conway household. At half past nine, the hour set for Antonia's lessons, Antonia was nowhere to be found. Pearl at last ventured to tap at Mrs. Conway's bedroom door. Mrs. Conway was sitting up in bed, in white satin and yellow lace, with her breakfast tray on her lap. In response to the news that her youngest child was missing, she answered, "She's probably gone crabbing. I'm afraid that if you want to do lessons in summer you will have to get up a little earlier. She was out of the house by seven, I dare say." And she smiled maliciously. Pearl saw that coöperation was unlikely, hostility probable, and withdrew. Durland, her second pupil, presented himself a little ahead of time. He came downstairs at ten, drank a cup of black coffee and ate a peach. He was recklessly wearing his last pair of clean white trousers. He was paler and more like a young bird than usual. He, too, had his problems. While willing to oblige Miss Exeter in every particular, while eager to help her and make her appear a worker of miracles, her mere proximity prevented his mind from functioning at all. Do what she could, her efforts to get him thinking about the problem of three men, A, B and C, who, working together, could do a piece of work in three days, was like trying to crank a dead automobile. She tried beaming upon him, she tried being severe; either way his intense emotion flooded his mental processes. She thought, "I've solved worse problems than this, but I'm sure I don't know what to do." He himself gave her the clew. She had explained for the third time that if you let _x_ equal the number of days that it took A, working alone--when he interrupted her. He was sitting beside her, leaning his head on his hand and staring at her in a maze of admiration. Suddenly he said, "Do you like teaching, Miss Exeter?" "I like teaching girls," she answered with a quick inspiration. He drove his unwilling intelligence to take in this incredible statement. "Girls," he said, opening his honest blue eyes and wrinkling his forehead. "Why girls?" "They're so much cleverer than boys." She tossed it off as if were a well-known and generally admitted fact. He was gentle with her. "People think just the opposite," he said. "Men do."