“You mean he came to your school? The scandalous rodent-loaf!”

“A magnificent cad, you mean. He's positively gaping at your bosom, Lyddie!" Mariah said in a scandalized whisper. "I swear he's undressing you with his eyes!"Lydia's lip twitched. "How lurid you sound. I really must censure your reading material.""There can be no doubt you have his attention now," Mariah giggled.”

“I am telling you now that you did right with Robin Stewart and I am telling you that the error you made came later, when you took no heed of his call. It was too late then, I know it. But he should have been in your mind. He was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader—don’t you know it? I don’t, surely, need to tell you?—And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up your privacies, your follies and your leisure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are the led.”

“You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet could be running loose in your pants.”

“Handle your scandal.”

“Your stay in the camp was merely an allegory, if you know that word. It was an allegory--speaking at the highest level--of how scandalously, how outrageously a meaning can take up residence in a system without becoming a term in it.”