to end Don's childhood. He was left to his imaginary Miss Margaret and his other make-believes through all that long, radiant summer; but in the fall, Miss Morris opened a "private and select" academy for boys and girls, and Don was enrolled as her second pupil.
Her first had been little Mary Morris, her small sister.
IV
Between the ages of eight years and of eighteen, there seems to be a period in which the individuality of the schoolboy does not develop. The originality of the child has been overgrown; the eccentricities of the young man have not yet sprouted. Don, seated at a desk that was exactly like a score of other desks in Miss Morris's schoolroom, studied the common lessons from the prescribed books; and what he learned, he learned like a parrot. Seated at home, beside the "study" table in the playroom, he worked out his exercises mechanically with Frankie, or idly scorched the wood of his lead pencils over the flame of the lamp. He learned to play the games which his schoolmates played, to fight as they fought, to believe what they believed, to act as they acted. His mind no longer grew of its own strength, in its own inclination; it was forced in a hothouse bed, and trained to a set figure.
