His own classroom, after a
week, became a different place. There had been some disposition to take a
facetious view of Cope's adventure. His class had felt him as cool and
rather stiff, and comment would not be stayed. One bright girl thought he
had spoiled a good suit of clothes for nothing. The boys, who knew how much
clothes cost, and how much every suit counted, put their comment on a
different basis. The more serious among them went no further, indeed, than
to say that if a man had found himself making a mistake, the sooner he got
out of it the better. For weeks this affair of Cope's had hung over the
blackboard like a dim tapestry. Now it was gone; and when he tabulated in
chalk the Elizabethan dramatists or the Victorian novelists there was
nothing to prevent his students from seeing them.
Medora Phillips became sympathetic and tender. She let him understand that
she thought he had been unfairly treated. This did not prevent her from
being much kinder to Amy Leffingwell. Amy, earlier, had been so affected by
the general change of tone that, more than once, she had felt prompted to
take herself and her belongings out of the house.
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