`` He was such a mite for his age when he came here . I declare I hardly knew him today . He 's getting to look a lot like his father . '' `` He 's a smart boy , '' said Mrs. Bell . `` He 's smart enough , but '' ... Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice ... `` I believe he tells queer stories . Gracie came home from school one day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about people who lived down at the shore ... stories there could n't be a word of truth in , you know . I told Gracie not to believe them , and she said Paul did n't intend her to . But if he did n't what did he tell them to her for ? '' `` Anne says Paul is a genius , '' said Mrs. Sloane . `` He may be . You never know what to expect of them Americans , '' said Mrs. Andrews . Mrs. Andrews ' only acquaintance with the word `` genius '' was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual `` a queer genius . '' She probably thought , with Mary Joe , that it meant a person with something wrong in his upper story . Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk , as she had sat on the first day of school two years before , her face leaning on her hand , her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of Shining Waters . Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils that for a moment college had lost all its charm . She still felt the clasp of Annetta Bell 's arms about her neck and heard the childish wail , `` I 'll NEVER love any teacher as much as you , Miss Shirley , never , never . '' For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully , making many mistakes and learning from them . She had had her reward . She had taught her scholars something , but she felt that they had taught her much more ... lessons of tenderness , self-control , innocent wisdom , lore of childish hearts . Perhaps she had not succeeded in `` inspiring '' any wonderful ambitions in her pupils , but she had taught them , more by her own sweet personality than by all her careful precepts , that it was good and necessary in the years that were before them to live their lives finely and graciously , holding fast to truth and courtesy and kindness , keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity .
They were , perhaps , all unconscious of having learned such lessons ; but they would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars XXXXX the Roses .
For about at by from in like of that to