2
Miriam looked out of the cab window, hardly hearing Julia’s next remark. The drab brick walls of King’s Cross station were coming towards them. When they had got themselves and Julia’s luggage out of the cab and into the train for Banbury Park she was still pondering uneasily over her own dislike of appearing as a successful teacher. This stranger saw her only as a teacher. That was what she had become. If she was really a teacher now, just that in life, it meant that she must decide at once whether she really meant to teach always. Everyone now would think of her as a teacher; as someone who was never going to do anything else, when really she had not even begun to think about doing any of the things that professional teachers had to do. She was not qualifying herself for examinations in her spare time as her predecessor had done. Supposing she did. This girl Julia would certainly expect her to be doing so. What then? If she were to work very hard and also develop her character, when she was fifty she would be like Miss Cramp; good enough to be a special visiting teacher, giving just a few lectures a week at several schools, talking in a sad voice, feeling ill and sad, having a yellow face and faded hair and not enough saved to live on when she was too old to work. Prospect, said the noisy train. That was it, there was no prospect in it. There was no prospect in teaching. What was there a prospect in, going along in this North London train with this girl who took her at her word?
She turned eagerly to Julia who was saying something and laughing unconcernedly as she said it. “If you’d like to know what it is I’ve come over for I’ll tell you at once. I’ve come over to learn Chopang’s Funeral March. It’s all I think about. When I can play Chopang’s Funeral March I’ll not call the Queen me aunt.”