characterized her. ‘Anyway, if she was wise to Cartright she’ll be wise to us if we go poking about down there. That’s my point.’
‘And, granted your premises, not a bad one,’ said Laura thoughtfully. ‘Look here, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll give the ghost another chance, and if we hear that whistling row again we’ll go into action, young Alice and all. She’s game, all right, although her teeth are apt to chatter. How does that strike you?’
‘Alice wouldn’t tackle a ghost.’
‘Ghost your old goloshes. Have you seen young Alice play net-ball? If she can’t jump on a ghost from behind and bite pieces out of its neck, I’m a cow’s grandmother.’
‘That’s still in the future,’ said Kitty, with happy inspiration.
On the following morning, Tuesday, Miss Topas put on her coat and turned the collar up. Then she checked the contents of her attache-case, added an extra fountain-pen, glanced regretfully at the neat files of her lecture notes on their shelves in the warm, cheerful room, and then looked out of the window. Students in groups were walking across the grounds. There was a thick autumn mist which might turn to fine weather later in the day, or might, Miss Topas gloomily concluded, turn to rain. At any rate, she did not want to go out into it
Her assignments for that morning were to supervise three history lessons; one by Miss Holt, a brilliant student in the Second-Year, a resident of Bede Hall; the second by Miss Pinkley, a doubtful stayer, also in her second year, and the third by a First-Year student from Athelstan, Miss Priest.
Sandwiched between the second and third of these lessons came a physical training lesson by — for Kitty had read and pronounced the name aright — Miss Cornflake, a One-Year student from her own Hall, Columba.
Like many of the lecturers, Miss Topas, as she had already indicated to Deborah, objected strongly to supervising lessons in physical training. She knew nothing about the subject, she protested — nothing at all.
‘You used to play hockey for the County,’ said Miss Rosewell.
‘And since when has hockey-playing become a qualification for judging neck rest and arms upward stretch?’ Miss Topas demanded. Gently supplied with a copy of the Board’s syllabus, she refused to look at it.
‘If she keeps the little brutes on the move and cuts out Country Dancing she’ll be all right, so far as I’m concerned,’ she said.
‘If the students can take P.T. they can take anything,’ said the drawling voice of Miss Pettinsalt, throwing in a bone of contention at which she knew all the Common Room would snap.
Miss Topas, picking up her traps preparatory to departure into the misty morning, went over points in the debate that had followed. Deborah, she remembered, had made one contribution only.
‘I never know why, with some of these students, the children don’t break their necks,’ Deborah had observed.
‘They probably do,’ Miss Topas herself had answered, ‘but it isn’t found out until later.’
She left her door open for Carrie to clear away breakfast, and descended the front steps of Columba to cross the grounds in the direction of the garages. The school she was bound for was two and a half miles from College, and it was her practice to pick up two or three of the students in her car, for, although there was a bus service, it was infrequent, and those who caught the bus arrived either much too early or (as was already becoming the rule by which Kitty conducted her life during this trying period) slightly late. The headmistress had remonstrated with her on the point, but Kitty had remained firm.
‘I suffer from asthmatic wheezing,’ she explained, ‘and the school is too cold for me at twenty-past eight. By five-past nine it is much safer.’
‘I don’t know how you dare be late on School Prac.,’ Alice had remonstrated.
‘Well, the sooner I’m chucked out, the sooner I can begin hair-dressing,’ argued Kitty. With the cussedness usually displayed by Fate, however, she was not chucked out, but was permitted, instead, to continue in her outrageous line of conduct.
Miss Topas, who, beneath a flippant attitude, concealed a strong sense of duty and responsibility, was always at the school of her assignment in very good time. Sometimes she talked to the headmistress; sometimes she asked permission to see the ‘stock list’ of history textbooks in use at the school; sometimes she inspected such things as the surface of the playground and, from the outside, the homes of the children.
On this particular morning, however, she did none of these things, because she was held up by the police, and was forced to make a long detour to reach her destination. Her usual road ran south-east from the College, downhill and through the woods, until it met a major road at which Miss Topas turned almost due west for a hundred yards or so, and then south-west until the road crossed the canal. Once across, another hundred yards brought her to another main road, and this, turning north-east, ran alongside the river from which the canal had been cut.
It was as she was driving, at a respectable twenty-eight miles an hour, along this pleasant bit of riverside road, that Miss Topas was held up.
She prepared to show her driving licence, but the sergeant merely said politely: ‘Afraid you’ll have a good way to back, miss. Nobody allowed this way this morning.’
‘Oh, something wrong with the road?’
‘Be all right by lunch-time, miss. I should sound your horn as you go. The mist’s a bit tricky along here.’
It was very thick alongside the river. Not more than a couple of yards of the silvery water could be seen from the edge of the bank. The haze of mist hung over the rest like teased wool. There was twenty yards’ visibility on the road. Miss Topas put the car in reverse, and, thankful that she had come, comparatively speaking, so short a distance off the main thoroughfare, backed carefully, sounding her horn.
It seemed as though, on such a morning, most of the students had preferred to take the bus rather than to walk, for she passed nobody going her way, and arrived at the school at twenty-five to ten, for the first lesson, that to be given by Miss Holt.
She allowed Miss Holt five minutes to get going, and then went in. Good notes, good illustrations, pleasant voice, attentive class — Miss Topas gave a very high mark, wrote a couple of lines of criticism, stayed in for the next quarter of an hour, and then drifted out.
