She stayed on and taught arithmetic for one thing. And when she was not
teaching arithmetic, she was giving little dictations, setting little
themes, controlling some fifty young and very free translators of _Le
Philosophe sous les Toils_. Miss Quincey had a passion for figures and
for everything that could be expressed in figures. Not a pure passion,
nothing to do with the higher mathematics, which is the love of the soul,
but an affection sadly alloyed with baser matter, with rods and perches,
firkins and hogsheads, and articles out of the grocer's shop.
Among these objects Miss Quincey's imagination ran voluptuous riot. But
upon such things as history or poetry she had a somewhat blighting
influence. The flowers in the school Anthology withered under her
fingers, and the flesh and blood of heroes crumbled into the dust of
dates. As for the philosopher under the roofs, who he was, and what was
his philosophy, and how he ever came to be under the roofs at all, nobody
in St. Sidwell's ever knew or ever cared to know; Miss Quincey had made
him eternally uninteresting. Yet Miss Quincey's strength was in her
limitations. It was the strength of unreasoning but undying conviction.
Nothing could shake her belief in the supreme importance of arithmetic
and the majesty of its elementary rules.
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