The eight little girls who made up the upper class of the junior school stood in a close row as near as possible to Miriam’s chair at the head of the table. They were silent and fresh and eagerly crowded, waiting for her to begin. She kept them silent for a few moments for the pleasure of having them there with her. She knew that Miss Perne, sitting in the window space with the youngest class drawn up in a half-circle for their Scripture lesson, was an approving presence, keeping her own little class at a level of quiet question and answer that made a background rather than a disturbance for the adventure of the elder girls. “Not too close together,” said Miriam at last, gathering herself with a deep breath; “throw back your shoulders and stand straight. Don’t lump down on your heels. Let your weight come on the ball of your feet. Are you all all right? Don’t poke your heads forward.” As the girls eagerly manoeuvred themselves, wilfully carrying out her instructions even to turning their heads to face the opposite wall, she caught most of the eyes in turn smiling their eager affectionate conspiracy, and restraining her desire to get up then and there and clasp the little figures one by one, began the lesson. Four of the girls, two square-built Quakeresses with straight brown frocks, deep slow voices and dreamy eyes, a white-faced, tawny-haired, thin child with an eager stammer, and a brilliant little Jewess knew the “principal facts and dates” of the reign of Edward I by rote backwards and forwards in response to any form of question. Burra hung her head and knew nothing. Beadie Featherwell, dreadfully tall, a head taller, with her twelve years, than the tallest child in the lower school, knew no more than Burra and stood staring at the wall and biting her lips. A stout child with open mouth and snoring breath answered with perfect exactitude from the book, but her answers bore no relationship to the questions, and Gertie could only pipe replies if the questions were so put as to contain part of the answer. The white-faced girl was beginning to gnaw her fingers by the time the questioning was at an end.
“Well now, what is the difficulty,” said Miriam, “of getting hold of the events of this queer little reign?” Everybody laughed and was silent again at once because Miriam’s voice went on, trying to interest both herself and the successful girls in inventing ways of remembering all the things that had to be “hooked on to the word Edward.” In less than ten minutes even the stout snoring girl could repeat the reign successfully, and for the remainder of their time they talked aimlessly.
The children standing at ease, saying whatever occurred to them, even the snoring girl secured from ridicule by Miriam’s consideration of whatever was offered. Their adventure took them away from their subject into what Miriam knew “clever” people would call “side issues.” “Nothing is a side issue,” she told herself passionately with her eyes on the green glare beyond the window. The breaking up of Miss Perne’s class left the whole of the lower school on her hands for the rest of the morning.
By half-past twelve she was sitting alone and exhausted with aching throat at her place at the head of the table.
“Khoo, isn’t it a filthy day!” Polly Allen, a short heavy girl with a sallow pitted face, thin ill-nourished hair and kind swiftly moving grey eyes, marched in out of the dark hall with flapping bootlaces. In the bay she sat down and began to lace up her boots. The laces flicked carelessly upon the linoleum as she threaded, profaning the little sanctuary of the window space. “Oh me bones, me poor old bones,” she muttered. “Eunice!” her hard mature voice vibrated through the room. “Eunice Dupont!”
“What’s the jolly row?” said a slow voice at the door. “Wot’s the bally shindy, beloved?”
“Like a really beautiful Cheshire cat,” Miriam repeated to herself, propped studiously on her elbows shrinking, and hoping that if she did not look round, Eunice’s carved brown curls, her gleaming slithering opaque oval eyes and her short upper lip, the strange evil carriage of her head, the wicked lines of her figure, would be withdrawn. “Cheshire, Cheshire,” she scolded inwardly, feeling the pain in her throat increase.
“Nothing. Wait for me. That’s all. Oh, my lungs, bones and et ceteras. It’s old age, I suppose, Uncle William.”
“Well, hurry your old age up, that’s all. I’m
