Chapter 8

Agnes Burch stood at the front of her classroom in the September morning and said nothing for a moment. He watched her process it: not with the performed emotion of a woman performing gratitude, but with the specific, controlled quality of a person allowing themselves to believe something they had been afraid to believe."That is—" She stopped.She looked at the slate behind her, which read: What do we know today that we did not know yesterday?The question she apparently wrote every morning, which he had observed on all four days, and which was, he thought, the most precise summary of pedagogy he had ever encountered."Thank you," she said plainly. No elaboration, because elaboration would have been less than the plain word."You are not going to tell me this is more than you hoped for?" he said."It is precisely what I hoped for," she said. "I did not hope for less." She met his gaze with the directness that was her most consistent quality. "I have been running this school for four years, and I have hoped every year for a patron who understood what it was. I did not reduce the hope simply because the patron had not yet arrived."He looked at her across the empty classroom. He had been in this room for four days, and had been in the company of this particular woman for four days, and had been conducting, with the rigor he applied to assessments he considered significant, an ongoing evaluation of what he was observing.The evaluation was complete."Miss Burch," he said, "I have a question that is not about the foundation."She was still."I intend to return to Rothbury," he said, "not for the foundation, though I will have occasion to visit on that account. I intend to return because..." He stopped and identified the right word from several. "...because I find that I have more to learn here than I anticipated, and that the instruction is of a quality I have not found elsewhere, and that I am reluctant to conclude it." He held her gaze. "That is, I am aware, an unusual statement from an employer to an employee.""The endowment revision makes the employment relationship somewhat different," she said, with the precision she brought to propositions that required it. "When the foundation is independently endowed, I will no longer be employed by your estate.""Yes," he said. "I am aware of that."A pause. It was not accidental.

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