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 in the office, and I'll assemble them in the great hall." She ushered them into a little room, and hurried away.

"Ha!" said Johns, when they were alone. "Going to be a tyrant, eh?"

"Most people like orders better when they're clear," said Austin.

Johns nodded. "Young man," he said, "you have some very sound ideas."

In the mean time, Miss Curtis, breathless and flustered, rushed into the geometry class. A fat girl in a navy blouse was at the black-board (thinking, not why one side of a triangle was shorter than the sum of the other two sides, but rather, why it was that any one should torture her to give her reasons for believing so obvious a fact) when Miss Curtis beckoned away the teacher and closed the door behind them both.

"Oh," she cried, "the most extraordinary thing has happened! There's a young man down-stairs who looks like a god and says he owns this school."

Miss Hayes, who looked rather like a worn middle-aged Diana herself, smiled at her friend's excitement. She was Ph.D. in mathematics and had always been Mrs. Bevans's right hand—so much so that most people had expected that the school