"What will happen if I speak to the one that has been sent to
Coventry?" asked Wolodia.
"We'll send you to Coventry too," said Diana, and the meeting murmured agreement.
No one was ever sent to Coventry, but I had no further complaints against the class. One interesting feature in the affair was this: Violet, a lively girl full of fun, one day got up and, as a joke, proposed that Mr. Neill be sent to Coventry. The others, usually willing to laugh with Violet, protested.
"That's just silly, Violet," they said. "If you propose silly things like that we'll send you to Coventry."
Then someone got up and proposed that Violet be sent to Coventry for being silly, and Diana at once took the chair. I got up and moved the negative, pointing out that I made no charge against her, and she was acquitted by a majority of one. I mention this to show that children of eleven and twelve can take their responsibilities seriously.
When I told the story to Macdonald he said: "But why didn't you join in their noise?"
"For two reasons, Mac," I said. "Firstly these children were not under the suppression of government schools; secondly it wasn't my school."
III.
The servant girl at the Manse has had an illegitimate child, and Meg Caddam, the out-worker at East Mains is cutting her dead. Thus the gossip of Mrs. Macdonald. Meg Caddam is the unmarried mother of three.
I have noticed again and again that the most severe critic of the unmarried mother is the unmarried mother, and I have many a time wondered at the fact. Now I know the explanation; it is the familiar Projection of a Reproach. Meg feels guilty because of her three children, but her guilt is repressed, driven down into the unconscious.