“Well, my dear, I tell you only what I saw with my own eyes—Polly Allen and Eunice Dupont running about in the park without their hats.”
“Ech,” syphoned Miss Haddie, drawing her delicate green-grey eyebrows sharply towards the deep line in the middle of her forehead. She did not look up but sat frowning sourly into her bowl of bread and milk, ladling and pouring the milk from the spoon.
Miriam kept a nervous eye on her acid preoccupation. No one had seen the behaviour of her own face, how one corner of her mouth had shot up so sharply as to bring the feeling of a deeply denting dimple in her cheek. She sat regulating her breathing and carefully extracting the stone from a prune.
“Did ye speak to them?” asked Miss Jenny, fixing her tall sister over her pince-nez.
Miss Perne sat smilingly upright, her black eyes blinking rapidly at the far-off bookshelves.
“I did not speak to them—”
“Eh, Deborah, why not?” scolded Miss Jenny as Miss Perne drew breath.
“I did not speak to them,” went on Miss Deborah, beaming delightedly at the bookcase, “for the very good reason that I was not sufficiently near to them. I was walking upon the asphalt pathway surrounding the lake and had just become engaged in conversation with Mrs. Brinkwell, who had stopped me for the purpose of giving me further details with regard to Constance’s prolonged absence from school, when I saw Polly and Eunice apparently chasing one another across the recreation ground in the condition I have described to you.”
Miriam, who had felt Miss Haddie’s scorn-filled eyes playing watchfully over her, sat pressing the sharp edge of her high heel into her ankle.
“Eh, my dear, what a pity you couldn’t speak to them. They’ve no business at all in the recreation ground where the rough boys go.”
“Well, I have described to you the circumstances, my dear, and the impossibility of my undertaking any kind of intervention.”
“Eh, well, Deborah my dear, I think I should have done something. Don’t you think you ought? Eh? Called someone perhaps—eh?—or managed to get at the gels in some way—dear, dear, what is to be done? You see it is hardly of any use to speak to them afterwards. You want to catch them red-handed and make them feel ashamed of themselves.”
“I am fully prepared to admit, my dear Jenny, the justice of all that you say. But I can only repeat that in the circumstances in which I found myself I was entirely unable to exercise any control whatever upon the doings of the gels. They were running; and long before I was free from Mrs. Brinkwell they were out of sight.”
Miss Perne spoke in a clear, high, narrative tone that seemed each moment on the point of delighted laughter, her delicate head held high, her finely wrinkled face puckering with restrained pleasure. Miriam saw vividly the picture in the park, the dreadful, mean, grubby lake, the sad asphalt pathway all round it, the shabby London greenery, the October wind rushing through it, Miss Perne’s high stylish arrowy figure fluttered by the wind, swaying in her response to Mrs. Brinkwell’s story, the dreadful asphalt playground away to the left, its gaunt swings and bars—gallows. … Ingoldsby—the girls rushing across it, and held herself sternly back from a vision of Miss Perne chasing the delinquents down the wind. Why did Miss Perne speak so triumphantly? As much as to say There, my dear Jenny, there’s a problem you can’t answer. She enjoyed telling the tale and was not really upset about the girls. She spoke exactly as if she were reading aloud from Robinson Crusoe. Miss Haddie was watching again, flashing her eyes about as she gently spooned up her bread and milk. Miriam wished she knew whether Miss Haddie knew how difficult it was to listen gravely. She was evidently angry and disgusted. But still she could watch.
“Did ye go that way at all afterwards—the way the girls went?”
“I did not,” beamed Miss Perne, turning to Miss Jenny as if waiting for a judgment.
“Well, eh, I’m sure, really, it’s most diffikilt. What is one to do with these gels? Now, Miriam, here’s something for you to exercise your wits upon. What would ye do, eh?”
Miriam hesitated. Memories kept her dumb. Of course she had never rushed about in a common park where rough boys came. At the same time—if the girls wanted to rush about and scream and wear no hats nobody had any right to interfere with them … they ought to be suppressed though, North London girls, capable of anything in the way of horridness … the Pernes did not seem to see how horrid the girls were in themselves, common and knowing and horrid. “Dear, funny little O.M.’s” … they were something much more than that. They were wrong about the hats, but it was good, heavenly to be here like this with them. She turned to Miss Jenny, her mind in a warm confusion, and smiled into the little red face peering delicately from out its disorderly Gorgon loops.
“Well?”
“My dear Jenny,” said Miss Haddie’s soft hollow voice, “how should the child judge?”
Miriam’s heart leapt. She smiled inanely and eagerly accepted a second helping of blancmange suddenly proffered by Miss Perne, who was drawing little panting breaths and blinking sharply at her.
“Nonsense, Haddie. Come along, my dear, it’s a chance for you. Come
