"Ha!" she said, delighted with her own success.
"Ha indeed," agreed Froken, a smile breaking. "Co-ordination. All is co-ordination."
"They like Froken, don't they," Lucy said to Henrietta, as the students tidied away the implements of their trade.
"They like all the Staff," Henrietta said, with a faint return of her Head-Girl tone. "It is not advisable to keep a mistress who is unpopular, however good she may be. On the other hand it is desirable that they should be just a little in awe of their preceptors." She smiled in her senior-clergy-making-a-joke manner; Henrietta did not make jokes easily. "In their different ways, Froken, Miss Lux, and Madame Lefevre all inspire a healthy awe."
"Madame Lefevre? If I were a student, I don't think it would be awe that would knock my knees together, but sheer terror."
"Oh, Marie is quite human when you know her. She likes being one of the College legends."
Marie and The Abhorrence, thought Lucy; two College legends. Each with identical qualities; terrible and fascinating.
The students were standing in file, breathing deeply as they raised their arms and lowered them. Their fifty minutes of concentrated activity had come to an end, and there they were: flushed, triumphant, fulfilled.
Henrietta rose to go, and as she turned to follow Lucy found that Froken's mother had been sitting behind them in the gallery. She was a plump little woman with her hair in a bun at the back, and reminded Lucy of Mrs. Noah, as portrayed by the makers of toy Arks. Lucy bowed and smiled that extra-wide-for-foreigners smile that one uses to bridge the gap of silence, and then, remembering that although this little woman spoke no English she might speak German, she tried a phrase, and the little woman's face lit up.
"To speak with you, Fraulein, is such pleasure that I will even speak German to do it," she said. "My daughter tells me that you are very distinguished."