Adelaide rushed into the Professor’s office without knocking. “Professor! The publishers made a mistake when they printed that last paper we submitted. They've put your name last! Oh! I'm sorry, Mistress, I didn't realize I was interrupting!”

“It's fine,” she replied. “We were done with our business, please carry on.”

The Professor smiled and said, “No mistake, Adelaide. I told them to do that.”

“But....”

“Hush. The three of you did far more work on The Knight's Parchment than I ever did and it was very good. You all deserve it. The decision to reject traditional assertions of mere allegory and propose to take the writer's words at face value was bold.”

“You don't think that maybe we went a bit too far?”

“Having second thoughts?”

“Well, this time it'll look like we were leading the work so, yes, a little. But that's why you made them put your name last, wasn't it? You're taking off our training wheels. You're being sneaky.”

“That I am. But also, I'm just plain proud of something you did there.”

“Really?”

“You’ve reminded others that words have meaning. As you know, that long ago, the act of putting words down was not simple. Few were even literate. The fellow who wrote them, he meant those words. They were important to him and were what he wanted to be seen by some future reader. You did him an honor by taking him seriously. I like that. But even should it turn out that you misunderstood him in some way, you've made others in the field take a second look at the way they approach manuscripts. Changing the way people think about things is as important, if not more so, than changing what they think about things.”

“Thank you, that's really nice.”

“You're welcome and you earned it. Just be prepared for a flurry of correspondence on how to interpret ‘dragoness’ though. You'll have fun with that.”

She laughed, turned and left. The Mistress stood to leave, too, and at the door she turned to the Professor. “I just want you to know... I'm very glad now that it was you who came to us when you did.”