[Sidenote: Red Hair]
Mary Costello had fiery red hair, which swirled around her freckled face
in a way that would have delighted Titian, but which her pupils in
District 27 found only surpassingly funny. She unburdened herself one
night to her mother, who was just a generation more Irish than herself.
“That Thad Burrows thinks he’s so funny,” she stormed. “Today he said to
me, ‘Say, Miss Costello, do you wear a hat in winter?’ and I said of
course I did, and why shouldn’t I? And he said he should think it would
have to be lined with asbestos. Then they all bellowed, and if he ever
mentions it again I’ll lambast him for it,” and Mary’s eyes snapped with
indignation.
“There now, Mary, don’t be after letting a fool kid upset ye so,” her
wise old mother advised. “That Thad Burrows is a bright boy, and if it
was someone else’s thatch he said it about ye’d be laughing with him
altogether. I’ll bet that if you’ll win the heart of him, he’ll lick
anyone that dares to think of a white horse when you’re around.”
Mary pondered this advise and took it. She showed no resentment toward
Thaddeus, but rather sought ways of being especially kind to him. She
discovered that he was eager to earn money, and helped him find work in
town on Saturdays; she lent him books and deferred to his opinion in
matters of stove-tending and mouse-catching. He came to connect his
leadership with the teacher, who found so many little ways of giving him
the prominence his soul craved. The red hair ceased to be a joke, and by
the term’s end the prophecy of Mary’s mother had come to pass.