Mr. Quince said, “What’s going on here?”

Nobody said anything — nobody ever does to a supervisor if they can avoid it.

He said, “You, Dentremont. What are you up- to?”

The boy was red-headed and even smaller than I, with very prominent ears. He looked very young, though he couldn’t have been since he was in the same class as I.

He said, “Nothing, sir.”

After a moment of sharp gazing around, Mr. Quince accepted that and unbent sufficiently to introduce me. He didn’t introduce anybody else, apparently assuming I could catch on to the names soon enough on my own. The buzzer for the first hour sounded then and he said, “All right. Let’s set to work.”

When he left, the red-headed boy went behind one of the teaching machines and busied himself in tightening down the back plate.

The girl nearest me said, “One of these days Mr. Quince is going to catch you, Jimmy, and then there really will be trouble.”

“I’m just curious,” Jimmy said.

Everybody more or less ignored me, probably no more knowing how to take me than I knew how to take them. They did watch me and I have no doubt they took their first opportunity to tell everyone their idea of what that new girl from the Fourth Level was like. It was soon clear to me that they eyed us as suspiciously as we on the Fourth Level regarded them, with the added note that in our case it was justified while in theirs it was not. I took no pleasure in having girls look at me and then put their heads together and whisper and giggle and if I had been a little more sure of myself I would have challenged them. As it was, I just dug into my work and pretended I didn’t notice.

After first hour, three of the kids left. Jimmy Dentremont stayed where he was, and since my schedule card called for me to stay here second hour, I didn’t move, either. He looked closer at me than I could like. I didn’t know quite what to say. But then people had been staring and prying and even prodding from the moment we arrived in Geo Quad.