2
At eleven o’clock Mrs. Corrie swept into the schoolroom. Miriam looked easily up at her from the dreamy thicket where she and the children had spent their hour, united and content, speaking in undertones, getting easily through books that had seemed tiresome and indifferent the day before. She had felt the play of her mind on theirs and their steady adult response. They had joined as conspirators in this mad contemptible business of mastering the trick of the text-book, each dreaming the while his own dream.
“You darlings,” cried Mrs. Corrie, “how sweet you all look!” They raised drunken eyes and beamed drowsily at her. “Give them a holiday,” said Mrs. Corrie, raising her hands over the table like a conductor about to start an orchestra. “Give them a holiday—a picnic—and come and buy hats!”
In a moment the room was in an uproar of capering figures. “Hats! A new hat for Rollo! Heaps of cash! I’ve got heaps of cash!”
Miriam blinked from her thicket. This was anarchy; she felt herself sliding. But they were so old. All so old and experienced. She so young, by so far the youngest of the four.