“They’re just before getting truly restless. It always happens at the end of winter. The very benches seem to get harder; they sit fidgeting and staring, and when I call on one to recite and he doesn’t even hear his name, the others giggle and nudge each other. How were yours?”

“James is like you say your lot are. His eyes out the window, his mind on his ‘farm.’ He begged his father so; Mr. Davis has given him an acre to do with as he wants this year. He’s to plow it, plant it, tend it, harvest it. At twelve he already thinks of himself as a farmer like his father.” Proctor shrugged, bent to pick up a piece of slate and studied it before dropping it into the brook. “At least he’s begun to work at arithmetic—as long as I couch the problems in bushels of corn and gallons of milk and pounds of cotton. Adam is working in a kind of happy fever. He’s determined to feel no shame when he goes to the university. Nor will he need to in Latin and algebra and ancient history. But Greek is not his subject.”

“Don’t mention Greek; I feel ignorant.”

“Adam will never know English grammar as well as you do. And how is Miss Sarah?”

“Well.” Roman’s tone was a little surprised.

“The other ladies?”

“Well too.” There was something in this he did not yet comprehend.

“There are so many. And Rachel?”

“At about this minute she’ll be getting home from the day school, if she hasn’t gone off with Annabel and Doreen. If she’s home, she’ll be looking for me. She’s teaching me French and how to waltz, and she can do a funny imitation of Mr. Midas Mott declaiming Juliet.”

Proctor left a long pause while he studied his friend’s face. “And you? How are you?”

They touched then, eagerly and clumsily: rubbing hands, patting hands. Then they relaxed and leaned together side by side against the sunny rock, arm in arm, fingers clasped, legs touching, joined and separated by the similar woolen trousers they wore.

“I had a letter by today’s post,” Proctor said, “from my friend in Philadelphia, Miss Eliza Truman.” Roman frowned slightly; this then was the little mystery. He knew her name from past references Proctor had made. “She has succeeded at last in interesting a number of her more prosperous acquaintance in the idea of her school. She is determined to make a beginning by October. A Mr. McLeod has given her the use of some upper rooms of a stable he owns in Chestnut Street, which may serve both as classrooms and as dormitory for certain students who come to her homeless.”

Roman held Proctor’s hand in a tighter grip. “You have told me about her before.”

“Yes, but now her plans are certain.”