Nancy wasn't back in the car, and starting off in the direction they had taken, he soon came to her room. There must have been a hundred women in it and it was Leofwin, not Nancy, who was talking to them. Tom opened the door quietly and sat down on a stool in the rear. Nancy, pale and helpless, was sitting on one side of a resplendent circulatory system drawn to illustrate the subtleties of the designer's art. "You will observe, ladies," Leofwin was saying in his purest Suffolk manner, "that shading is done with the crayon well back, like this." He made a few swift lines on the corner of the System and looked up with his bright, inquisitive smile. "Now are there any questions?" There was a stony silence, amid which the one o'clock whistle blew. The foreman, left in charge by Bob, rose. "I'm sorry, Miss Whitman, but I'm afraid we'll have to stop today." The worker's friend and sister bowed to him and, clutching her notes and her bag, with firmly set lips and eyes fixed, marched to the door. Leofwin followed, bowing pleasantly right and left, to the intense gratification of his audience, and the trio retired. "Jolly, wasn't it?" said Leofwin. "I'm sorry, though, we couldn't have had more time. I didn't get to foreshortening at all. However, I think I probably helped them a good deal. Sometime I'd like to tell them about etching, you know, and aqua--and mezzotints." Nancy received her assistant's remarks in complete silence. She was even unable to do more than nod a good-bye to him. But she shook Tom's hand in parting, and, with an air that might augur the worst, she asked him to come and see her on the next afternoon. Nancy was particularly charming, Tom thought when he was again with her, and what was even more to the point, he found that they were to be alone. She got his tea ready without difficulty--he was flattered that she remembered his formula--and they settled back for a good talk and laugh. "I wasn't civil to him, but I really don't care! Did you ever know a more dreadful person?" "Never. He's awful. But, tell me, how did it go until he took charge?" "Why, not so badly. But, oh, Tom I heard about you!" Tom flushed. "What did you hear?" "Well, Bob was here last night and he said he saw you through the window. He told us how you got them all around you and how you might have been talking about anything." She was wholly admiring. "Oh, I just talked to them," he said. "I never could have gotten away with anything formal." "Isn't it funny? I used to think that teaching must be the easiest thing in the world. I used to imagine myself lecturing to the whole college, but I can appreciate now what you and Henry are doing." Tom was anxious to have the conversation move upon firmer ground. He was also in the dark as to what the next move in the campaign was to be.