A voice, faint under such portents, called recess's end. The children gathered into their classroom and slipped slowly from their eagerness.
Brewster's body was strewn listlessly about his desk, his eyes averted from the lesson and lost among the wonders of the classroom's wooden wall. Some distant part of his awareness discerned an alphabet being flung with what could only be a pedant's flamboyance. The dusty man at the front of the classroom asked Brewster whether or not he wished to read. No, Brewster replied, he didn't. He had tried before, and failed. The man insisted. Brewster focused on the page: the letters failed him, but he likened order to pictures, making the necessary associations for sound. …
