Miss Fairfax was right. The staff took coffee in Mrs. Lysaght’s private
room and melted away to their afternoon work or leisure. Gillian, who
had Middle School preparation from 2:15 to 4 that day, was just about to
leave when Mrs. Lysaght laid a white, detaining hand on her wrist.
“A moment, dear. The hymn! So many hymn-books—Prayer should be elastic,
spontaneous. I want it known by heart. On Friday. I shall give out this
week’s hymn on Monday and each class will learn a verse each day. On
Friday. _No_ hymn-books.”
“But, Mrs. Lysaght, some hymns have more than five verses.”
“That,” said Mrs. Lysaght with one of her astonishing lapses into
clarity. “That will be your affair, dear. You will divide the hymn for
me each week and repeat the day’s portion with the school in the Hall
before Prayers.”
Gillian accepted her added burden and by the end of the week was
enjoying the five minutes before Prayers, even though it took ten
minutes off her breakfast-time to encompass the earlier arrival and the
rounding up of stragglers for rehearsal. On Friday the school did her
credit. Two hundred hymn-books made a black pyramid outside the Hall
door and, when the note was struck, two hundred voices raised as one,
sang in the clear cold tones of early youth the heated words:
My God how wonderful Thou art!
Thy Majesty how bright!
How radiant Thy mercy-seat
In depths of burning light!
In the second week, however, trouble came. Mrs. Lysaght, whose taste ran
to sentiment, selected a fresh hymn, and the school did not take very
kindly to it. There was trouble with the Fourth Form, headed by Madge
Porter.
Madge Porter was not a pleasant child. She was always asking the kind of
question which arises not from a desire for knowledge but out of a
determination to put teachers in holes. She had completely routed Miss
Parratt during a lesson on the Reformation by asking that unfortunate
lady whether she believed in the Thirty-Nine Articles. Miss Parratt
having given an emphatic assent, Madge Porter had told her she was
wrong, as her father, who was in a position to know because he had taken
a degree in Science, said they were nothing but a farrago of
superstition, and please would Miss Parratt tell her what “farrago”
meant.
And now Madge Porter was persuading the Middle School that this
hymn-learning was extra-prep. So Gillian, on her own authority, took the
ringleaders aside at Recreation on Wednesday and taught them their
verses by rote. She sacrificed her own quarter of an hour to do it; but
Madge Porter made her cross.
On Thursday morning Madge arrived at Prayers with a note for Mrs.
Lysaght. It was from the parent who was in a position to know the truth
about the Thirty-Nine Articles, and it ran:
DARWIN VILLA,
PUTNEY HILL,
_May 27th, 1912_.