Clare, watching and listening, purred like a sleepy cat. She wondered why Alwynne was absent ... she was missing a lot.... Louise was annoying—she had been excessively irritated with her ten minutes before—and there was the debacle of the scholarship papers—but to class her with Agatha! What fools these women were!
The discussion had become argument, and was growing faintly acrimonious, when a deep voice cut across it.
Miss Hamilton, a visiting music mistress, always had a hearing when she chose to speak. She was a big woman, with a fine massive head and shrewd eyes. She dressed tweedily and carried her hands in her pockets, slouching a little. It was her harmless vanity to have none. Teaching music was her business; her recreations, hockey, and the more law-abiding forms of suffrage agitation. She was a level-headed and convincing speaker, with a triumphant sense of humour that could, and had, carried her successfully through many a fantastic situation. Rumours of her adventures had spread among the staff, if not through the school, and beglamoured her; she could have had a following if she had chosen. But her healthy twelve stone crashed through pedestals, and she established comradeship, as she helped you, laughter-shaken, to pick up the pieces.
A postponed lesson had given her time to attend the rehearsal, and she had afterwards joined the flock of mistresses at tea. Clare, who thought more of her opinion than she chose to own, had eyed her once or twice already, and at the sound of her voice she stopped her lazy rocking.
"But they are not in the same category! Any schoolgirl could have played Constance as What's-her-name played it, given the training she has had." Miss Hamilton nodded pleasantly to the rocking-chair. She appreciated Clare's capacities. "But Arthur——"
"Well, I thought Agatha was splendid," repeated a junior mistress stubbornly.
"She was. An excellent piece of work! 'But the hands were the hands of Esau.'"
"They always are," said the little gym mistress fervently.
Clare gave her a quick, brilliant smile. She blushed scarlet.
The music mistress laughed; she enjoyed her weekly glimpse of school interdependencies.