tion fighting inch by inch for their sun-parched country, of a great
nation sacrificing even its sense of humor to consolidate an empire and
avenge a disgrace, was entirely outside her imaginative experience.

What had it got to do with her?

There was nobody to implant ideals of citizenship or try to show her
relation to the rest of mankind. Her education at the board school was
mechanical; the mistresses were like mental coffee-grinders, who, having
absorbed a certain number of hard facts roasted by somebody else,
distributed them in a more easily assimilated form. They tried to give
children the primary technique of knowledge, but without any suggestions
as to the manner of application. She had enough common sense to grasp
the ultimate value of drearily reiterated practice steps in dancing. She
perceived that they were laying the foundation of something better. It
was only her own impatience which nullified some of the practical
results of much academic instruction. But of her intellectual education
the foundations were not visible at all. The teachers were building on
sand a house which would topple over as soon as she was released from
attendance at school. Jenny was a sufferer from the period of transition
through which educational theories were passing, and might have been
better off under the old system of picturesque misapprehensions of
truth, or even with no deliberate education at all. It is important to
understand the stark emptiness of Jenny's mind now and for a long while
afterwards. Life was a dragging, weary affair unless she was being
amused. There had been no mental adventures since, flashing and
glorious, the idea of dancing came furiously through the night as she
lay awake thinking of the pantomime. The fault was not hers. She was the
victim of sterile imaginations. Her soul was bleak and cold as the life
of man in the days before Prometheus stole fire from heaven.

If it had not been for May, Jenny would have been even less satisfactory
than she was. But May, with her bird-like gayety--not obstreperous like
a blackbird's, but sweet and inconspicuous as the song of a goldfinch
dipping through the air above apple-orchards--May, with her easy
acceptance of physical deformity, shamed her out of mere idle
discontent. Jenny would talk to her of the dancing-school till May knew
every girl's peculiarity.

"She's funny, my sister. She's a caution, is young May. Poor kid, a
shame about her back."

They q