Desire watched them hopefully but the only one who seemed appealing was a sturdy prairie school teacher going “home.”  Desire liked the school teacher.  She was so solid, so sure of herself, so wrapped up in and satisfied with something which she called “education.”  She asked Desire where she had been educated. desire did not seem to know.  “Just anywhere,” she said, “when father felt like it and had time.  And I taught myself shorthand.”

“Then you aren’t really educated at all?” said the teacher with frank pity.  “What a shame!  Education is so important.”

Benis was frankly afraid of her.

“But you need not be,” Desire assured him.  “She looks up to you.  She thinks that, being a professor, you have even more education than she has.”

“God forbid!” said Benis devoutly.

“Besides, she knows all about you.  I found out today that she is an Ontario girl.  And she lives—­guess where?  In Bainbridge!”

Aunt Caroline (they were at dinner) looked up from her roast lamb and remarked “Impossible.”

“But she does, Aunt.  She says so.”

Aunt Caroline fancied that probably the young person was mistaken.  “Certainly,” she said, “I have never heard of her.”

“She lives,” said Desire, “on Barker Street and she took her first class teacher’s certificate at Bainbridge Collegiate Institute.”

Aunt Caroline fancied that they gave almost anyone a certificate there.  All one had to do was to pass the examinations.  As to Barker Street—­there was a Barker Street, certainly.  And this young person might live on it.  She, herself, was not acquainted with the neighborhood.

“But she knows you,” Desire persisted.  “She said, ’Oh, is Miss Caroline Campion your Aunt?  I remember her from my youth up.’”

“Very impertinent,” said Miss Campion.  Her nephew’s eyes began to twinkle.

“Oh, everyone knows Aunt Caroline,” he explained.  “But then, everyone knows the Queen of England.”

Aunt Caroline was mollified.  “Of course, in that sense—­” She felt able to go on with her roast lamb.

Dr. Rogers, who had listened to this interchange with delight, said now that the young lady had been quite right about her place of residence.  She did live in Bainbridge, on Barker Street.  He did not know her personally but her older sister was a patient of his.  The mother and father were dead.  Very nice, quiet people.

Desire was quite young enough to laugh and to point this with “Dead ones usually are.”

The school teacher, at another table, heard the laugh and felt a passing sense of injustice.  It seemed unfair that anyone so obviously without education could feel free to laugh in that satisfying way.  It was plain that young Mrs. Spence scarcely realized her sad deficiency.  And it certainly was a little discouraging that the cleverest men almost invariably. . . .