Kindly allow me to make a most emphatic protest against the
unwholesome restraint and unpedagogic waste of time at present
imposed on my young daughter Madge, by one of your junior
mistresses called, I understand, Miss Armstrong.
It appears that this Miss Armstrong has curtailed my daughter’s
recreation and interfered with the consumption of half a pint of
milk at 11 o’clock ordered by my doctor for her, by keeping her
in to commit to memory some highly reprehensible lines.
My daughter has been obliged to burden her mind with such an
incitement to laziness and lack of initiative as this:
O could we but relinquish all
Our earthly props and simply fall
On Thine almighty arms.
I make no complaint of the inculcation of Christian doctrine
which I am aware is inseparable from the curriculum of your
school, as I have taken due precaution to fortify Madge’s mind
against superstition by my own home teaching. But I do strongly
protest against the insidious inertia advocated in the passage I
have quoted and also against Miss Armstrong’s tyranny, and must
beg that Madge be removed from the classes in which she teaches.
Yours sincerely,
JAMES PORTER, B.SC.
P.S. I shall be glad if, for the future, Madge may be excused
from Prayers.
Mrs. Lysaght gave Gillian the letter to read.
“Most unwise—most unwise,” she murmured and bit her lip as she waited
for Gillian’s comment.
“What a bad old man,” said Gillian. “No wonder Madge is such a terror.”
Mrs. Lysaght blushed. She always blushed when you said the wrong thing.
“Mr. Porter is a _parent_,” she said with heat; “a _parent_—he has every
right—and the milk—never forget the means of health.”
“But—you said ...” began Gillian.
Mrs. Lysaght waved her hand, the hand with the gold pencil in it.
“That has nothing to do with the question. Madge Porter does not take
Scripture. You may go now, dear, but do not let it occur again.”
Madge Porter’s rebellion blew over, but “It” occurred again. It, as Miss
Fairfax explained when Gillian had exhausted herself in wondering what
she was expected to avoid, being a letter from a parent.
“You should never let it come to letters,” said Miss Fairfax. “A good
assistant mistress consumes her own rows.”
“That’s what I was trying to do,” Gillian protested, “and even if I’d
known that Mr. Porter was such a bigoted free-thinker, I don’t feel that
I should have let Madge off. I don’t like this hymn business myself, but
if I’m to do it it shall be done properly.”
“It won’t last,” Miss Fairfax promised her; “it’s your punishment for
that impertinence of yours at luncheon last week. You’ll be let off if
you’re properly good.”
The difficulty, however, was to be properly good in a world where all
the values were so different from her own.