"You have helped me over awkward ground, and I expect they would sooner listen to a stranger." He went away with the principal, and Agatha wondered about him as she resumed her task.

It was plain that he knew something about science, but this was not strange, since geologists and chemists sometimes visited the school.

After she dismissed her class the principal sent for her.
"I suppose you don't know who that man is ?" she asked.
Agatha admitted that she did not know and colored when the other told her.

The man was a famous scientist who had recently simplified the smelting of some refractory British Columbian ores, and was now understood to be occupied with the problem of utilizing certain barren alkali belts in the West.
"Oh!" she said, "I talked to him as if he were one of the girls.

In fact, I believe I was gently patronizing." "I don't think he was much hurt." "Then he must have been amused and that is nearly as bad.