CHAPTER I
The school secretary pattered down the long corridor and turned into a class-room.
The room was a big one. There were old-fashioned casement windows and distempered walls; the modern desks, ranged in double rows, were small and shallow, scarred, and incredibly inky. In the window-seats stood an over-populous fish-bowl, two trays of silkworms, and a row of experimental jam-pots. There were pictures on the walls—The Infant Samuel was paired with Cherry Ripe, and Alfred, in the costume of Robin Hood, conscientiously ignored a neat row of halfpenny buns. The form was obviously a low one.
Through the opening door came the hive-like hum of a school at work, but the room was empty, save for a mistress sitting at the raised desk, idle, hands folded, ominously patient. A thin woman, undeveloped, sallow-skinned, with a sensitive mouth, and eyes that were bold and shining.
They narrowed curiously at sight of the new-comer, but she was greeted with sufficient courtesy.
"Yes, Miss Vigers?"
Henrietta Vigers was spare, precise, with pale, twitching eyes and a high voice. Her manner was self-sufficient, her speech deliberate and unnecessarily correct: her effect was the colourless obstinacy of an elderly mule. She stared about her inquisitively.
"Miss Hartill, I am looking for Milly Fiske. Her mother has telephoned——Where is the class? I can't be mistaken. It's a quarter to one. You take the Lower Third from twelve-fifteen, don't you?"
"Yes," said Clare Hartill.
"Well, but—where is it?" The secretary frowned suspiciously. She was instinctively hostile to what she did not understand.