It was the end of May. The weather was warm and sunny, the windows of
the West End were gay with flowers; in the Park the great beds of
rhododendrons blazed forth in a glow of beauty. It was the season, and
a particularly gay and festive season at that. "Everybody" was in town,
including a few million "nobodies." There were clerks toiling by their
thousands in the City, chained all day long to their desks; there were
clerks' wives at home in the suburbs, toiling all day too, and sometimes
far into the night; there were typists, and shop assistants, and
prosperous heads of households, who worked steadily for five and a half
days a week, in order that their families might enjoy comfort and ease,
condensing their own relaxation into short Saturday afternoons. And
there were school-mistresses, too, who saw the sun through form-room
windows, but felt its call all the same--the call of the whole glad
spring--and grew restless, and nervous, and short in temper. It was not
the leaders of society whom they envied; they read of Court balls, and
garden parties, of preparations for Ascot and Henley with a serene
detachment, just as they read with indifference in the fashion page of a
daily newspaper that "Square watches are the vogue this season, and our
_elegantes_ are ordering several specimens of this dainty bauble to
match the prevailing colours of their costumes," the while they suffered
real pangs at the sight of an "alarming sacrifice" at twenty-nine and
six. The one was almost within their grasp; the other floated in the
nebulous atmosphere of a different sphere.
In the staff-room at lunch-time the staff grew restless and critical.
The hot joints no longer appealed to their appetites, the watery
vegetables and heavy puddings became things abhorred. They thought of
cool salads and _compotes_ on ice, and hated the sight of the greasy
brown gravy. They blamed the cook, they blamed the Committee, they said
repeatedly, "Nobody thinks of _us_!" and exchanged anecdotes
illustrative of the dulness, the stupidity of their pupils. As for the
Matric. candidates, they would _all_ fail! There wasn't a chance for a
single one. The stupidest set of girls the school had ever possessed!
Oh, certainly they would all fail!
"And then," said Mary Rhodes bitterly, "_we_ shall be blamed."