She was thirty-six at the time
of her first friendship with Sam and lived alone among her books.
Sam had been deeply moved by her friendship. It had seemed to him
something significant that grown people with affairs of their own should
be so in earnest about his future as she and Telfer were. Boylike, he
counted it a tribute to himself rather than to the winsome youth in him,
and was made proud by it. Having no real feeling for books, and only
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.
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