MLLE. DE MENNECY (feeling her way to a change of front): "Sarah s'est conduite si heroiquement que pour le moment je n'insiste plus. Je vous felicite, mademoiselle, sur votre franchise; vous pouvez rejoindre vos camarades."
The Lord had delivered her into my hands.
One afternoon, when our instructress had gone to hear Princess Christian open a bazaar, I was smoking a cigarette on the schoolroom balcony which overlooked the railway line.
It was a beautiful evening, and a wave of depression came over me.
Our prettiest pupil, Ethel Brydson, said to me:
"Time is up! We had better go in and do our preparation. There would be the devil to pay if you were caught with that cigarette."
I leant over the balcony blowing smoke into the air in a vain attempt to make rings, but, failing, kissed my hand to the sky and with a parting gesture cursed the school and expressed a vivid desire to go home and leave Gloucester Crescent for ever.
ETHEL (pulling my dress): "Good gracious, Margot! Stop kissing your hand! Don't you see that man?"
I looked down and to my intense amusement saw an engine-driver leaning over the side of his tender, kissing his hand to me. I strained over the balcony and kissed both mine back to him, after which I returned to the school-room.
Our piano was placed in the window and, the next morning, while Ethel was arranging her music preparatory to practising, it appeared my friend the engine-driver began kissing his hand to her. It was eight o'clock and Mlle. de Mennecy was pinning on her twists in the window.
I had finished my toilette and was sitting in the reading-room, learning the passage chosen by our elocution master for the final competition in recitation.