Loyal to the School

by Angela Brazil

To see Miss Ormerod sitting down on the teacher's chair, evidently intending to stop and listen, gave poor Lesbia what she afterwards described as "umpteen spasms". To deliver a lesson under the eye of the Principal was an ordeal for any junior assistant mistress even if she were well prepared. And, alas! Lesbia was not prepared at all. She had been busy with her own Latin and botany the night before, and had trusted to luck to get through the geography class with IIb. She was supposed to be teaching them the natural features of France, so she hurriedly drew an outline of that country upon the blackboard, and commenced to mark in the principal mountains and rivers, aided by stealthy glances at the map. She knew their general direction, but in her embarrassment she could not remember their names, and the book—on which she had pinned her trust—was in Miss Ormerod's hand.

Now it was a canon of the school that mistresses should have their own subjects at their finger-ends, and teach their lessons in the form of lectures, without constant reference to notes. By all good rights Lesbia ought to have been able to reel off the physical features of France as easily as she could repeat the multiplication table, but her wretched memory was an absolute blank. The sight of Miss Ormerod sitting there and directing what seemed the full telescopic power of her spectacles upon the blackboard, wiped away any fragments of knowledge which lingered in her agitated brain. She flushed and faltered, and tried to look at the map, and was in such a palpable quandary that, to save the situation, the Principal interfered.

"If you don't feel well," she remarked sternly, "you had better sit down, and I'll take the lesson."

With trembling knees and racing pulse Lesbia sank on to the chair, and listened in deep humiliation while Miss Ormerod, without any assistance from the book, gave an excellent geography lesson. The girls were models of attention and intelligence, and everything which they ought to have been, but never were, under their junior teacher. Lesbia hardly knew them for the same form.

"I shall hear about this from Miss Ormerod," she ruminated. "I don't suppose for a moment this is the end of it."

It certainly was not. She had a most unpleasant interview in the Principal's study that afternoon, and received scathing criticism on her incapacity and lack of discipline. Miss Ormerod instituted a thorough supervision over her teaching, proposing to be present herself during the geography lessons, and warning her of surprise visits any time during her other classes.

"If you undertake to teach in this school you will do it properly or not at all," finished the head mistress grimly. "I consider so far you've utterly failed and you're worse than useless as a help to the staff."

Lesbia went home overwhelmed with shame. Miss Ormerod was very hard, but there had been justice in her remarks. A girl who was giving tuition in return for her fees ought to have seen to it that her services were of real value to the school. It was a wrong balance of duty to concentrate on her own homework and neglect to prepare for her classes. She could appreciate that point now, though it had not struck her before. It would be a horrible ordeal to teach in Miss Ormerod's presence, but there would be one compensation at any rate; the children would behave themselves, and she would be treated to no more of the "ragging" which had often made the lessons unendurable.

"If they know she may pop in any moment I believe they'll keep quiet even during dictation. Young wretches! I shall have a sword to dangle over their heads now," she thought, cheering up a little.

There is no doubt that Miss Ormerod, like many new brooms, "swept clean", but the girls considered that she made too clean a sweep altogether of the past traditions of the school. She had many theories of her own regarding girls, and she was anxious to put them into practice.