‘I hear you’ve changed round with Miss Harbottle,’ she said. ’I’ve told the students. Oh, and there’s a wretched child with adenoids who will ask unintelligible questions. I thought I’d warn you. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you won’t snap at the children, will you? So bad for the students. Patience and gentleness, gentleness and patience, are what I try to inculcate.’
Deborah thought of saying that she was taking a cane in with her, but she did not want to make an enemy of the Mistress of Method, who, although excessively irritating, was one of the senior lecturers and had been at Cartaret longer even than the Principal, so she merely smiled weakly, and walked to the table on which was another copy of the book which contained the poem.
She picked it up and then walked as steadily as she could into the Demonstration Room. The children, unnaturally quiet, and as upright and stiff as little statues, gave her the unwinking attention of savages. The students whispered and rustled. The Mistress of Method said: ‘Oh, someone give out the books.’ This was done. Everyone then settled down. Deborah’s mind was a blank.
‘Good morning, children,’ she said in a husky voice. One or two children giggled, but the others replied: ‘Good morning, madam,’ with the horrid automatic intonation of musical-boxes, and fixed her with their disconcerting gaze.
‘We’ve come here this morning,’ said Deborah, clearing her throat, ‘we’ve — we are — I mean I would like you all to think about something very beautiful this morning before we begin, so that we — so that you — I mean I would like you — perhaps flowers, or the lovely trees, or — perhaps some of you can think of something even more beautiful for yourselves.’
She tried to smile, and felt that her face had twisted itself into some horrible grimace.
‘Can — can you think of something beautiful?’ she said nervously, addressing a child at the end of the front row, whilst she racked her brain to remember the beginning of the lesson as she had prepared it. “What was the poem she was supposed to be taking? On what page of the book could she find it? She looked helplessly at the book as it lay on the table, and began to turn over the pages. Surely, surely she had put a marker to show the-page? Surely she hadn’t been such a fool — What was the damn silly poem, anyway? To her horror she discovered that she had not the faintest idea.
She looked in hunted fashion at the class. One or two hands had come up. What had she asked them? She had not the slightest recollection. Or did they want to go outside already, goaded by the suggestions of the students? Or was one the dreadful child with adenoids? She pointed to a child in the centre of the class.
‘Biscuits,’ said the child.
‘I beg your pardon? I didn’t quite…’ said Deborah, glancing helplessly at the students, who were beginning to look thoroughly uncomfortable. Hastily she pounced on another child. This one, to her horror, proved to be the one with adenoids. She got up and made a long and possibly important contribution of which Deborah followed not one single word. A mist gathered in front of her. Her eardrums pounded.
‘What the hell shall I do?’ she wondered; and, wondering, was suddenly conscious of the heartening voice of Laura Menzies, speaking loudly, clearly and sanely.
‘I don’t see why they want to think about beauty, Miss Cloud, when they are really thinking about cats running home and night is come, and a lot of bally owls and things,’ she was saying.
‘Oh, dry up, Dog,’ said Kitty. ‘You can talk all that rot afterwards. You’re not supposed to butt in on the lesson.’
Deborah’s brain cleared. She smiled at the children who were all staring at Laura, and said, in her ordinary tones:
‘I wonder whether you can find the poem for yourselves in the books? Come on. You heard it’s about cats and the night coming and the owl, and I believe…’
But by that time every child was searching feverishly, and an outbreak of calling out, argument and self-justification set the lesson triumphantly on its feet, where to Deborah’s dizzy relief, it remained.
She sent for Laura after lunch.
‘I think you ought to know, Miss Menzies, that you saved my bacon,’ she said, with her shy, very charming smile. Laura nodded, and grinned.
‘It was Group B.2. who had the fun,’ she said. ‘Did you hear about the snakes?’
‘What snakes?’
‘Well, you know, when your lesson was over, we all squeezed out so that Group B.2. could have Miss Harbottle’s lesson -Mathematics for the Million and all that. Well, how long would you say the room was empty?’
‘I don’t know. But it wasn’t really empty at all, because the children were in it all the time.’
‘No, they weren’t. Miss Fishlock turfed them all out for a run whilst Miss Harbottle got the rulers given out. I wonder what my headmistress will say when I do same on School Prac? Remind me to try it some time. Well, anyway, some time during that five minutes some sportsman must have nipped in and shoved a couple of assorted vipers inside the gramophone cabinet, and, apparently, about half-way through Miss Harbottle’s exposition of When is a Square not a Square, out these serpents came, creating quite a sensation.’
‘Good heavens!’ said Deborah. ‘How beastly! What did Miss Harbottle do?’
‘Stood back and asked if anyone was willing to remove them, as she thought they were frightening the children. Kept her head pretty well, I hear from my spies.’
‘And —?’
‘Yes. A selfless knight-errant named Cowley — know her? — doing Advanced Biology, so it was all very suitable — nipped out, collected the all manner of creeping things, and took them off to the lab. Then Fishy and Miss Harbottle between them blew out the flames, and Miss Harbottle concluded the most popular dem. since Pharoah kicked Moses in the pants for producing the plague of frogs.’
Nothing else, Deborah discovered, was talked of by Staff and students during the afternoon, for Miss Harbottle had formally reported the matter to the Principal, and Group B.2. had been ‘put through it’ — to quote Miss Harbottle herself — ‘in no uncertain manner,’ but without the slightest result.
‘Personally, I wouldn’t put it past Cartwright,’ said Miss Topas, when asked for her opinion.
Deborah herself went to the Principal when she learned how much stir the affair had caused, and said abruptly that she was not at all sure that the little attention had not been intended for her.
‘I was supposed to give my demonstration lesson at the time Miss Harbottle gave hers. We changed over, as a matter of — er — of mutual convenience, at the very last moment. I only mention it because I do think it is more likely that somebody new, like myself, would be ragged rather than Miss Harbottle, who is well established here.’
‘I see. Thank you, Miss Cloud. It was a horrid thing to do, whoever it was intended to annoy. I shall interview Group A.1., then, and see where that will lead us. I am determined to track the culprit down. I had half suspected Miss Cartwright, of Group B.2., but what you say lends a different aspect. I am obliged to you. How are you getting on at Athelstan? Not finding yourself overburdened?’
The Principal got no further in her search for the person responsible for the snakes, and the excitement which the incident had occasioned would probably have been short-lived but for a more serious outbreak which, even in the widest sense of a very elastic word, could scarcely be looked upon as ragging.
In Athelstan Hall there were twin sisters called Carroway. Needless to say, they were always known as the Seeds, and were in their second year. Apart from their name and their twinship, they were in no way outstanding and certainly had not, so far as was known, any enemies.
But one afternoon, when Annet Carroway went to the box-room to get a dress out of her trunk, she discovered that all the clothes she had left there had been slashed and torn. These clothes included her new winter overcoat, which had had both pockets ripped right out and a great piece chopped out of the back. Further, the trunk itself had had the lock burst open, and the top looked as though someone had jumped on it.