And love, grown faint and fretful
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure."

Then she handed the book--it was the only copy--to the boy sitting in
front of her, and he rose to read the next verse. Prestonby, catching
the teacher's eye, nodded and smiled. This was a third-year class, of
course, but from h-a-t spells hat to Swinburne in three years was good
work.

There were three other classes, a total of little over a hundred
students. There was no trouble; they were there for one purpose
only--to learn. He spoke with one of the teachers, whose class was
busy with a written exercise; he talked for a while to another whose
only duty at the moment was to answer questions and furnish help to a
small class who were reading silently from a variety of smuggled-in
volumes.

"Only a hundred and twenty, out of five thousand," Yetsko said to him,
as they were dropping down in the elevator by which they had come.
"Think you'll ever really get anything done with them?"

"I won't. Maybe they won't," he replied. "But the ones they'll teach
will. They're just a cadre; it'll take fifty years before the effects
are really felt. But some day--"

The shops--a good half of the school was trades-training--were noisy
and busy. Here Prestonby kept his hand on his gas-projector, and
Yetsko had his rubber hose ready, either to strike or to discard in