If there had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever
so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too rigorous to allow
any romantic infection to be introduced from without.
Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed,
well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but
the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls
day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs,
his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often
soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and
breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in
which a hundred of these little piping streamlets-might lose themselves;
anybody might see what would happen. Young girls wrote home to their
parents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute,
and thought they were making rapid progress in their studies. There was
a great enthusiasm for the young master's reading-classes in English
poetry.
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