Cecily held a letter in her hand one November evening. It was the seventh letter from home, but the first six were all brief notes, and this was the first one that had some interesting parts in it.

"Life just seemed more spicy back home." commented Cecily, as she giggled when reading Dan's funny descriptions of the many happenings back at home. It was not a trivial job to get serious little Cecily giggling, but Dan did possess this rare talent. Felicity got kissed on the ear by Peter Craig and did not slap him? Peg Bowen's cow disappeared one day and refused to come back to her when Uncle Roger found it six days later? Oh, that's just too weird!

But she sighed impatiently when she read the next part written by her mother, admonishing her not to overexert herself for maybe the one hundredth time. Mother is such a dear, and so sensible most of the time, but why does she always treat her like a baby who can't take care of herself properly? Cecily was not averse to being treated like a little girl, but a baby was a different thing—which was still tons better than being treated as an invalid, as Janet was sometimes wont to do, for example when she obstinately opposed Cecily's studying for Queen's entrance exam. This is unbearable, thought Cecily rather defiantly. To be sure, her health had been less than perfect when she was twelve and thirteen, but isn't that the past—isn't she perfectly well now?

She put down her letter and decided to go for a walk outside. It wouldn't be of use to try to study now, when Mother's words had given her an uneasy feeling all over.

And then she bumped into Mary who had just come in.

"Cecily, we have another dancing party tonight. I do hope you could come."

Another party! Cecily thought Mary was spending way too much time in parties rather than studying, and she frowned disapprovingly.

"Please... this is just your second party here, and believe me two parties in half a year isn't too many. Just come for my sake, okay?"

Anybody might have said that, but Mary said that with such a tone...Cecily felt her heart softening.

"And I've even invited some of the professors here, which you would surely want to know!"

Professors? Though Cecily was doubtful, she began to consider the idea seriously.

"But I must finish my essay. It is due the day after tomorrow and I don't know what to write about yet."

Which was a lame excuse for Mary—Cecily realized that even before Mary answered,

"Why, you'll have plenty of time tomorrow—but if you miss the party there would be...no more."

The way Mary said "no more" was alluring...so alluring that one could hardly imagine how she said that by merely looking at the words. Cecily knew she had been another victim of Mary's persuasion powers. She was really unmatched in this aspect.

"But...I don't dance well."

"You know that won't matter."

"I don't have pretty dresses or shoes either."

"You don't really think you'd mind that, do you?"

"But..."

"No more 'but's. Just do some preparations and we'll go after supper. You won't be disappointed, I promise."

Cecily still had her doubts, yet obediently she began to pick a dress. If she was going, she might as well have some faith in Mary's words.

Cecily managed to keep cheerful on her way to the hall where the party was held, but after spending an hour in the hot, crowded hall, the old "left out" feeling again began to grab her heart. She had had a dance with an unfamiliar boy, at Mary's request, but she was not a good dancer, and in her nervousness she had tripped so many times that her face was burning with embarrassment. After that no one could make her dance any more, and Cecily just wandered around idly. The hall was noisy with everyone talking, but who cares which football team won last night? Or whether some boy kissed some girl in the classroom? Or what kind of high-heeled shoes is more fashionable? The dreadful essay again began to worry her. She tried to think about it, but in so much noise she couldn't even concentrate. Very soon Cecily felt as if she were going to cry. She buried her face in her hands. Crying in public? This wouldn't do, at all.

But minutes later she forgot why she had been almost crying, for a talk between two professors had caught her attention. One of the professors was her trigonometry teacher, whom she did not like too much, while the other one, a casually-dressed man in his thirties, was a stranger to her—but what were they talking about?

"Inverse trigonometric functions are really a monster to teach! I drilled them the various identities again and again, and where is my reward? Many of these idiots don't even know what the arccosine of minus one is." ranted Professor Williams, Cecily's trigonometry teacher.

"Yes, I can imagine. Arcsines and arccosines can become quite confusing—I found it a bit difficult in my own school days as well." said the other professor thoughtfully, "Especially things like the arccosine of the sine of an angle, and similar variations."

Cecily felt her mind clicking with his. Why, she had found such things dizzying herself—until she had finally got the hang of them. She stood five feet away—she did not dare to introduce herself—and listened.

"I don't see what's difficult in that. Just use the trigonometric identities—the problem with those students is that they just don't bother to remember these simple equations, at least not until the day before the exam."

Cecily was reminded of Professor Williams' lectures, during which he applied one identity after another without ever explaining why they were used in this way. Maybe that was the problem—Cecily thought he had relied entirely too much on these identities.

"I think what had confused me most were the ranges of these functions."

"Aren't they quite easy to remember?" said Professor Williams sarcastically.

"I had never taught trigonometry, but I guess many students can answer correctly when asked literally the ranges of these functions, but they don't remember to use them when solving problems."

Now that was insightful. Cecily felt as if the professor had said what she had wanted to say, but had been unable to express in words.

"Well, I don't know what to say." shrugged Professor Williams, "I suppose students who could pass the entrance exam of Queen's should have more brains than to suppose that what's taught to them are only to be remembered literally."

Things went fine for a while, and Cecily was even beginning to understand Professor Williams—teaching is hard, after all. But Cecily's sympathy vanished in an instant at Professor Williams' last remark.

"All right. I'm going to have a dance with my wife. I don't see why should we teach all these pretty girls so much mathematics. Women are supposed to keep house and raise children and dance, and what's the use of trigonometry to them? I don't like to teach them, and they don't like to learn, but now I'm just forced to spend tons of energy trying to teach them what they are simply not supposed to understand! For none of them do understand the true meanings of these equations, I daresay!"

Then Professor Williams got up and left, not knowing that he had hurt one of his students who had been standing just behind him. For Cecily was deeply hurt, and her face flushed with indignation. People usually regarded Cecily as a meek, mild little mouse who did not seem to have a temper at all, yet she did have her pride and her sensitive points, and Professor Williams' derogatory bruised them badly. Who is he to say that she isn't supposed to learn trigonometry? And how can he say that "none of them do understand the true meanings of these formulas"? Doesn't she understand them well enough herself?

Cecily hated these sweeping statements. She was reminded of the times when Professor Williams bitterly scolded the whole class just because one or two students were late or noisy or because a student failed to answer a simple question. He did have such a terrible habit to make sweeping statements—how they had hurt her! Cecily suddenly realized that this was the main reason why she had not liked him before—more than his less-than-clear explanations in his lectures.

This was too much. Cecily stamped her foot to relieve her hurt feelings—and got a fright when the other professor turned back and saw her.

"What's up, girl?" he asked Cecily questioningly, who was instinctively trying to hide.

It was quite a while before Cecily recovered from her fright. Had she been caught eavesdropping?

"No...nothing serious." she stammered.

But the professor gave her an even more questioning frown. This obviously did not satisfy him. She had to tell him her real thoughts, but it was so hard. Cecily took a deep breath, summoned up some courage and said nervously,

"I just don't like Professor Williams' way of saying that girls are not supposed to understand trigonometry."

The professor nodded and smiled—but was it a friendly smile, or a sarcastic one? Cecily wasn't sure. But she added,

"And I think if many students don't understand what is taught to them, it is the teacher's—well, maybe the students should not take all the blame." Cecily had wanted to say "it is the teacher's fault", but she remembered that she must be fair—Professor Williams' words hurt her just because it was unfair.

"Teaching isn't as easy as it seems." sighed the professor, "And quite a few of my students are interested only in passing the exams and getting the license and otherwise having fun. They don't really care to truly understand their lessons—as long as they remember enough to get a pass, they don't really want to learn anything more."

"And, " he hesitated a bit and added, "I must say that, in my classes, the girls disappoint me more—lots of them are like that."

"But not all." said Cecily. Her eyes looked beseeching—almost in tears.

"No, not all." the professor smiled again, and this time the smile looked pleasant. "It is a good habit to use accurate language and not to exaggerate, especially for a mathematics teacher."

They sat in silence for a moment, then—"I guess you are one of Professor Williams' students, right?"

"Oh, yes."

"You ought to introduce yourself first." the professor laughed.

Cecily flushed. She knew she had been impolite—but it seemed that she always got caught whenever she did anything remotely bad! But the professor continued, "Mmm...How do you think inverse trigonometric functions should be taught?"

That question caught her unexpected. Cecily wanted to think of a good way, but instead her brain just seemed frozen for a while.

"Well, in other words, how do you understand them yourself?"

Cecily thought she had understood them well, but actually expressing them in words—that turned out to be an entirely different thing. Finally she said briefly,

"I just plotted them."

"Care to explain?"

Cecily explained. She stuttered quite a bit and she feared her explanations might be rather unclear, but thankfully the professor seemed to understand her intentions.

"Yes, this does seem to be a good way to understand that." said the professor slowly, with a thoughtful frown. "So you see, being able to understand something really isn't the same as being able to teach it."

"I see." said Cecily, a bit remorsefully. "It's wrong of me to criticize my teacher when I couldn't have done better myself."

"Oh, that's all right. You know, we teachers are not infallible, and we do appreciate comments from the students—even if you just criticize, we know we had done wrong. You'll understand that when you become a teacher yourself."

Cecily nodded, but not without a bit of hesitation. Offering comments to her teachers sounded quite daunting for timid Cecily—especially disagreeable ones like Professor Williams. These professors always appeared so high up and infallible when she was talking to them, even though she was well aware, when listening to their lectures, that they did make mistakes.

"By the way, you must not mind my previous remark about the girls. You are not offended, are you?"

"No—no—" said Cecily. In truth she was a little hurt to hear that—but she was wise enough not to argue with facts.

"Truly I don't mean to view girls as if they were less clever than the boys. Actually—" he added with a mysterious hint, "my mother is a suffragist."

"Suffragist?" asked Cecily curiously.

And so their topic changed to women's rights. Like most other young country girls, Cecily had had no interest in politics—but the professor's explanations seemed to have changed her opinion in one night.

"You see, everything in the society exists for a reason." concluded the professor, after a nice explanation of various political terms.

Why, even politics can be interesting!

Cecily had rarely talked so much in one night—and never to a grown-up about serious matters, not just trigonometry and politics, but also physics, ancient Greek history, and even poems. For nearly sixteen years Cecily had lived mostly in the background. Everyone around her loved her, but few took her thoughts seriously, and she had got rather used to that. Yet tonight, sitting beside this professor, she had been showing another side of herself—a girl who, though inexperienced, had begun to have her own thoughts about things, even big, formidable things such as the government. For these three hours, she stayed on the foreground—and if she still felt shy and timid, she definitely did not feel left out anymore.

Then the clock struck eleven, and the party was coming to an end.

"Three hours! Can time pass as quickly as that?" said Cecily with her incredulous eyes fixed on the clock.

"Good times always pass quickly." smiled the professor. "We did have a nice, sensible talk tonight, didn't we?"

Cecily nodded with a wistful look in her eyes. She did not want to leave—but she had to, for Mary was waiting for her.

"Goodbye!"

"My feet hurt so. I really hate the man—or woman, whoever—who invented high-heeled shoes. But you seem to be having a good time." said Mary, looking at her little companion's brilliant face.

"Yes! Thank you so much for organizing it, and for persuading me to come. I have had such an interesting discussion with Professor—oh no, I have forgot to ask him his name. Mary, do you know about the professor that I had been talking with all night?"

"Mmm...I didn't pay attention, but...I think likely he is Professor Morris. Maybe he will teach us, but I don't know for sure."

It was nearly midnight when Cecily and Mary reached their boarding house. Molly, who had other matters to deal with that night, was already soundly asleep, but Cecily did not want to go to bed just now. She had finally thought of a topic for her essay—no, not just one, but maybe four or five, if she had had that many essays to write!—and she felt compulsed to finish it right now.

Her pen literally flew on the paper. How strange it was, that her mind was suddenly so full of ideas! And how could she imagine that she, who had always had difficulty in making her writings sufficiently long and detailed, now was finding her essay growing so fast that she even had to cut out some immensely interesting ideas?

Within one hour the essay was finished. Cecily exhaled a long breath as she threw down her pen. Finally something she could be satisfied with.

"Maybe I'm not such a dunce at writing after all." she thought happily—and yawned. It was past one o'clock. Mother must be shocked if she had known that she had stayed up so late—and on the very day her admonitions were received, at that!

Her final thoughts, before falling asleep, was about Professor Morris—or whatever he was called. He seemed to be such a kindred spirit to her. Could she ever see him again?

And she no longer minded Professor Williams much either—isn't he just "an old conservative who has yet to catch up with the changes of society", as the other professor had said? She would just study hard—and show him that he had been wrong.

A/N: Sorry for the long delay! Most of this chapter had been ready for quite a while, but filling the few remaining holes turned out to be quite difficult.