The Headmaster's Dilemma Read Online Free PDF

you're going to kill yourself if you don't ease up," Ione observed sadly on one such occasion.
    "Not so long as I thrive on it!" Michael exclaimed. "So long as I can actually see the barge getting slowly under way as I tug on it, the whole thing is a joy. Arnold of Rugby said there was no happiness on earth comparable to that of a headmaster who feels his school is on the right track."
    "And Arnold died of it at age forty-six. Read your Strachey."
    "Anyway, I'm sure he died a happy man. But don't worry, my love. I shan't do much dying so long as I have you. Which brings me to something I've been mulling over and which I'm now ready to discuss. I've been very much aware that I cannot expect you to get the same kick out of this Averhill job that I do. And I never forget that you gave up a career you loved for me."
    "Oh, Michael, it wasn't all that great," she protested, suddenly mortified at receiving so much credit for so minor a resignation. "I rather liked your thinking I'd sacrificed myself for you. Not that I wouldn't have, anyway."
    "Nonetheless, you did it. And I've been racking my brain to find a way of reviving your law career. The big firms in Boston or Springfield are too far to commute to with any comfort, and I'm too selfish and too crazy about you to contemplate your moving there and our being reduced to a weekend marriage."
    "Oh, never. Not that."
    "But our local burg, Glendon, has a small but reputable law firm only ten minutes' drive from here. Of course the school's regular counsel is in Boston, but Bates and Harris do our local work, and Joshua Bates is willing to supply you with an office in which to do legal aid work if the idea appeals to you. He won't give you a salary, but you can use his office staff, and he will refer clients to you who can't afford counsel for their wills and mortgages and marital troubles. You won't get paid, and you'll have to get yourself admitted to the Massachusetts bar, but neither of these need trouble you. It'll be the same kind of useful work you did so well in New York."
    Ione was touched almost to tears at this evidence of how sensitive he had been to a discontent that she thought she had concealed from him and what pains he had taken in his busy days to work out this plan in her behalf. She could imagine how it must have pained him to use a client's pressure on a dependent local lawyer to benefit his wife, and she had little doubt that he had used his own money to rent that office and buy a share of the staff time. Really, as a husband he was too good to be true!
    She motored the next day to Glendon for an interview with Joshua Bates. Glendon was a dreary little town with a few dreary little shop-lined streets, as unlovely as some New England villages could be charming. The nondescript offices of Bates & Harris occupied the second story of a two-story brick shop building. Mr. Bates was polite but reserved; Ione could well feel that he had no interest in legal aid and cared only to oblige the institution that probably supplied him with a good portion of his revenue. The office she would occupy was small and bare; it had probably been used to store files and had just been cleaned out by Mr. Bates's sullen old secretary who showed it to her and no doubt already resented the extra stenographic work that this grand lady from Averhill would demand. Ione could imagine the distrust with which the poor farmers of the neighborhood would regard "Mrs. Fancy Pants" from New York as she looked over their mortgage papers. Driving back into the beautiful Averhill campus, she wondered how she could ever have dreamed of leaving it.
    Michael expressed no disappointment when she told him of her decision not to accept the Bates offer, but simply said he would have to find another solution for her. He frowned, however, when she suggested that she might teach a girls' class in English Lit.
    "There are no girls' classes, dear. All classes are coed. And keeping order where there may be boys showing