With despair…buried deep in her heart like a wicked knife, Miss Meadows [...] trod the cold corridors that led to the music hall. Girls of all ages […] bubbling over with that gleeful excitement that comes from running to school on a fine autumn morning, hurried, skipped and fluttered by.
“You look fro-zen,” said she. Her blue eyes opened wide; there came a mocking light in them. (Had she noticed anything?)
“Oh, not quite as bad as that,” said Miss Meadows, and she gave the Science Mistress, in exchange for her smile a quick grimace and passed on.
She knew perfectly well what they were thinking. “Meady is in a wax.” Well, let them think it! Her eyelids quivered; she tossed her head, defying them. What could the thoughts of those creatures matter to someone who stood there bleeding to death, pierced to the heart, to the heart, by such a letter-
“I love you as much as it is possible for me to love any woman, but, truth to tell, I have come to the conclusion that I am not a marrying man, and the idea of settling down fills me with nothing but” and the word “disgust” was scratched out lightly and “regret” written over the top.
[…] what was Mary’s horror when Miss Meadows totally ignored the chrysanthemum, made no reply to her greeting, but said in a voice of ice, “Page fourteen, please, and mark the accents well—”
Staggering moment! Mary blushed until the tears stood in her eyes.
“The headmaster’s wife keeps on asking me to dinner. It’s a perfect nuisance. I never get an evening to myself in that place.”
“But can’t you refuse?”
“Oh, well, it doesn't do for a man in my position to be unpopular.”
“And then in the second line, Winter Drear, make that Drear sound as if a cold wind were blowing through it. Dre-ear!” said she so awfully that Mary Beazley, on the music stool, wriggled her spine.
But nobody had been as surprised as she. She was thirty. Basil was twenty-five. It had been a miracle, simply a miracle, to hear him say, as they walked home from church that very dark night, “You know, somehow or other, I’ve got fond of you.’” And he had taken hold of the end of her ostrich feather boa.
The head mistress sat at her desk. For a moment she did not look up. She was as usual disentangling her eye-glasses, which had got caught in her lace tie. “Sit down, Miss Meadows,” she said very kindly.
“Pay no attention to letter, must have been mad, bought hat-stand to-day—Basil”
“Oh, no, thank you, Miss Wyatt,” blushed Miss Meadows. “It’s nothing bad at all. It’s”—and she gave an apologetic little laugh—“it’s from my fiancé saying that . . . saying that—” There was a pause. “I see,” said Miss Wyatt. And another pause. Then—“You've fifteen minutes more of your class, Miss Meadows, haven’t you?”
“It ought to sound warm, joyful, eager […]”
And this time Miss Meadows's voice sounded over all the other voices—full, deep, glowing with expression.
