Forerunner.

I love this story that my Memaw tells about a teacher who came to rural North Carolina during the early 1900s. She found the information in some ancient, yellowed minutes of board meetings.

In the old days, teachers stayed with members of the community. I guess because they were single women and probably couldn't afford a home of their own.

A new teacher was arriving at the train station, and the farmer with whom she would be staying sent his sixteen year old son to collect the woman at the station in their horse-drawn buggy. The woman was youngish, to be sure, and dressed in one of those great, heavy, modest gowns that were the height of Victorian fashion sense.

As she climbed into the buggy, she raised her skirt just enough to expose her ankle, to which nylons, I suppose, and leather ankle boots must have clung rather seductively, peeping out from beneath frilly knickers that hung well below her knee. Nonetheless, she exposed that slim, sensual ankle, looked at the young boy, and said, I imagine, with a sly smirk, "Whadya think of that, kid?"

Needless to say, she was run out of town on a rail for what must have been considered lewd and risque behavior that no doubt contributed to the boy's eventual ruin.

I'd bet good money that she was an English teacher.