She went away to remove her hat and coat, and came back quickly, her masses of black hair suggesting but not confirming the impression that the wind had lately had its way with them. Her eyes scanned the table eagerly like those of a hungry boy. "Some of your scholars sick?" inquired Ted. "Two--and one away. So I'm to have a whole beautiful afternoon, though I may have to see them Wednesday to make up. I am a teacher in Miss Copeland's private school," she explained to Richard as simply as one of the young women he knew would have explained. "I have singing lessons of Servensky." This gave the young man food for thought, in which he indulged while Miss Roberta Gray told Ted of an encounter she had had that morning with a special friend of his own. This daughter of a distinguished man--of a family not so rich as his own, but still of considerable wealth and unquestionably high social position--was a teacher in a school for girls; a most exclusive school, of course--he knew the one very well--but still in a school and for a salary. To Richard the thing was strange enough. She must surely do it from choice, not from necessity; but why from choice? With her face and her charm--he felt the charm already; it radiated from her--why should she want to tie herself down to a dull round of duty like that instead of giving her thoughts to the things girls of her position usually cared for? Taking into consideration the statement Ted had lately made about his elder brother, it struck Richard Kendrick that this must be a family of rather eccentric notions. Somewhat to his surprise he discovered that the idea interested him. He had found people of his own acquaintance tiresomely alike; he congratulated himself on having met somebody who seemed likely to prove different. "So you rejoice in your half-holiday, Miss Gray," Richard observed when he had the chance. "I suppose you know exactly what you are going to do with it?" "Why do you think I do?" she asked with an odd little twist of the lip. "Do you always plan even unexpected holidays so carefully?" It occurred to Richard that up to the last fortnight his days since he left college had been all holidays, and there had been plenty of them throughout college life itself. But he answered seriously: "I don't believe I do. But I had the idea that teachers were so in the habit of living on schedules scientifically made out that even their holidays were conscientiously lived up to, with the purpose of getting the full value out of them."