Pearl saw that coöperation was unlikely, hostility probable, and withdrew.
Durland, her second pupil, presented himself a little ahead of time. He came downstairs at ten, drank a cup of black coffee and ate a peach.
He was recklessly wearing his last pair of clean white trousers. He was paler and more like a young bird than usual. He, too, had his problems.
While willing to oblige Miss Exeter in every particular, while eager to help her and make her appear a worker of miracles, her mere proximity prevented his mind from functioning at all. Do what she could, her efforts to get him thinking about the problem of three men, A, B and C, who, working together, could do a piece of work in three days, was like trying to crank a dead automobile. She tried beaming upon him, she tried being severe; either way his intense emotion flooded his mental processes.
She thought, "I've solved worse problems than this, but I'm sure I don't know what to do."
He himself gave her the clew. She had explained for the third time that if you let _x_ equal the number of days that it took A, working alone--when he interrupted her. He was sitting beside her, leaning his head on his hand and staring at her in a maze of admiration.