Deborah had attended prayers and had no lectures that morning now that her Demonstration lesson was in view. This Demonstration lesson, wished on her at short notice by the Senior English lecturer who had contracted a severe cold, was, she knew, not sufficiently prepared, and the poem was not one which she herself would have chosen. Since, however, thirty hectographed copies of it, and of the aim, material and method of the lesson, had already been circulated to the students, she had no option but to do the best she could. This, she thought miserably, would be surprisingly below the general standard of the College. She had become aware, as the term got into its stride and the students settled down, that Mrs Bradley’s lectures in psychology and Miss Topas’s lectures in medieval history were always crowded, even by students who had no particular reason for attending them, whereas her own lectures in English literature were attended only by those students who had neither the effontery nor the bad manners to cut them. Her Demonstration lessons, she felt, would be equally uninspiring.
She was feeling particularly depressed that morning, having had a passage-at-arms with a Second-Year student in Athelstan who had been discovered in the act of giving Lulu her shoes to clean, and whom Deborah had only been able to worst by threatening to report both her and Lulu to Mrs Bradley. The interview had left her feeling slightly like crying and with a notable diminution of her usual good-humour.
However, there was the set lesson, there were the students, and soon there would be the children. It behoved her to pull herself together and readjust her mind. She thought of the poem, groaned, picked up her hymn book and went dispiritedly out of the College hall and along to the Staff sitting-room. This happened to be next door to the Demonstration Room in which she would give her lesson.
Opposite this room was the cloakroom to which the children would be taken as soon as they arrived at the College. Deborah went out and had a look at it, and then she went into the Demonstration Room to see that everything there was in order. The room had been specially constructed and furnished for its purpose, and was a good deal wider than the other lecture rooms. At both sides there were benches to accommodate the students who would listen to the lesson, and between these two sets of benches were the desks for the children, so that the students were sideways on to both children and teacher. At the back of the room was a long bookshelf, there were a cupboard, a gramophone and the teacher’s desk at the front, and the door was on the teacher’s left as she faced the class.
Deborah fidgeted round this torture-chamber for five minutes or so, and then, having noted that the desks were supplied with pens, pencils and paper, for another Demonstration lesson which came before her own, she placed on the table some copies of the book from which the poem was to be taken, got a box of white chalk from the cupboard and then went back to the Staff sitting-room and tried to settle down to the business of correcting a batch of First-Year essays.
At ten minutes to ten Miss Harbottle, the lecturer in Mathematics, came in, dumped down her books and observed loudly and cheerfully: ‘Thank God for an hour off. Nothing now until that stinking Dem.’
‘Oh, are you the other one?’ asked Deborah, who had been too much engrossed in her own troubles to think of those of other people. ‘Do tell me something about it, and how one begins. I’m absolutely terrified.’
‘Oh, Lord, so am I, my dear. After all, one can’t help knowing that the majority of the students could make a much better job of it than we do. I don’t see why the Mistress of Method can’t do all the Dems. After all, Maths may be my subject, but I don’t affect to be able to teach it to children of nine and ten. Arithmetic lesson, if you please, on simple areas! And to Second-Year students who’ve all given it on School Practice already!’
‘I’ve got to take a poem with them — the children, I mean — for Group A.1. And I didn’t even choose the poem myself, and I loathe it, anyway,’ said Deborah.
‘How come?’ inquired Miss Harbottle, taking out her cigarette case and handing it over. Deborah accepted a cigarette and explained. ‘Hard luck,’ commented Miss Harbottle, fiddling with a lighter. ‘Curse this gadget! Ah, that’s it. Look here, I’ll tell you what. Mine is supposed to come at five-past eleven, but I’ll let you have first innings if you like. Both children and students are very much easier to handle first go off, and the children are apt to hot up for the second Dem. I’ve often noticed it.’
‘Oh, I say!’ said Deborah gratefully. ‘Would you really change! If only I could wade in and get mine over, I’d be most terribly grateful. I’d be able to have the discussion directly afterwards then, shouldn’t I? You know, before the brutes have got together and swopped ideas.’
‘Righto. Look here, I’ll waylay Fish as she comes out of her lecture and tell her to let the students know we’ve swopped. There’s nothing more in it than that. It won’t affect the time-table, as it happens.’
She lay back and finished her cigarette, then she went out to arrange with the Mistress of Method as she had promised.
‘I must just make sure the students don’t go giving out rulers until your Dem. is over,’ she said when she returned. ‘Children, even the mildest, always seem to think a ruler is a sort of animated drumstick. I have to have ’em out for my lesson, but you won’t need ’em for yours. Done any teaching?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve done two years at the Elinor Gresham School in North London, and before that I was at Nixfield for a year.’
‘You don’t look old enough, but I suppose you are. By the way, you might invite me over to Athelstan when convenient. We poor tramps who aren’t Wardens or Subs, have to go the rounds of the Halls for our grub, you know, and are supposed to spend a week at each in turn. I’ve had a week at Edmund, and I’d love to meet your old lady.’
‘We’ve got Miss Murdoch at present,’ said Deborah, ‘but she moves on to Bede on Sunday afternoon. It seems an odd system to me.’
‘Yes. It’s supposed to keep us all in touch with one another or something. I know there’s some theory about its being a good thing. The only thing I’ve ever noticed is that it encourages the students to dig stuff out of the Staff instead of looking it up for themselves, the lazy little beasts. Still, why should we worry? Glad I’m not a Warden, anyway. Has the Principal asked you yet whether you find yourself overburdened? If not, she will. Take my advice and say you can manage. What sort of lot have you got at Athelstan? I hear you had a very impressive first-night rag.’
They passed to happy and comfortable shop about the students until Deborah, coming to with a shock, realized that in ten minutes’ time she was due to stand before a class of children for the supposed benefit of a group of students, and give a lesson on
She could hear the children arriving. They had come by bus, and were cheerful and talkative. She took an apprehensive peep at them, but they looked nice little things and their teacher was young and pretty. The students, led, Deborah could hear, by Laura Menzies and Kitty Trevelyan, were helping them off with hats and coats and ushering them through the inner door of the cloakroom for the purpose referred to by their teacher as ‘visiting the offices’. So far as Deborah could determine, their efforts were meeting with very little success.
