pretending to have out of a desire to please, he sometimes went from one
to the other of his two friends, passing off their opinions as his own.

At this trick Telfer invariably caught him. "That is not your notion," he
would shout, "you have it from that school teacher. It is the opinion of a
woman. Their opinions, like the books they sometimes write, are founded on
nothing. They are not the real things. Women know nothing. Men only care
for them because they have not had what they want from them. No woman is
really big--except maybe my woman, Eleanor."

When Sam continued to be much in the company of Mary, Telfer grew more
bitter.

"I would have you observe women's minds and avoid letting them influence
your own," he told the boy. "They live in a world of unrealities. They
like even vulgar people in books, but shrink from the simple, earthy folk
about them. That school teacher is so. Is she like me? Does she, while
loving books, love also the very smell of human life?"

In a way Telfer's attitude toward the kindly little school teacher became
Sam's attitude. Although they walked and talked together the course of
study she had planned for him he never took up and as he grew to know her
better, the books she read and the ideas she advanced appealed to him less
and less. He thought that she, as Telfer held, lived in a world of
illusion and unreality and said so. When she lent him books, he put them
in his pocket and did not read them. When he did read, he thought the
books reminded him of something that hurt him. They were in some way false
and pretentious. He thought they were like his father. One day he tried
reading aloud to Telfer from a book Mary Underwood had lent him.