A Song of Sixpence Read Free Page B

daughters of Mr Archibald Grant, who kept the store. Her younger sister Polly never failed to give me a butterscotch drop when I went to the store on errands for my mother.
    â€˜Now, children, I’m glad to see you back after the holidays and to welcome the new pupils,’ Miss Grant began, and I thrilled, fancying that her smile dwelt on me. ‘As Lady Meikle will be making her usual opening-day visit to the school this morning, I expect you all to be on your best behaviour. Now answer your names as I make out the register.’
    When she called out ‘ Laurence Carroll’ I imitated the others with a ‘Present, miss’, which, however, was so uncertain as to suggest that I doubted my own identity. Nevertheless it was accepted, and after we had all given our names and Miss Grant had entered them in the big book on her desk she set us to work. The class was at different stages. Soon one section was droning out the two-times table, another copying sums from the blackboard on their slates, while a third struggled with block letters of the alphabet. To me all this appeared such manifest child’s play that my earlier apprehension began to fade and to be replaced by a tingling consciousness of my own worth. What infants, not to know a B from a D ! And who, amongst these older boys, had dipped, like me, into the mysteries of Pears’ Cyclopaedia with the picture of the tramp on the frontis-piece announcing that for five years he had used no other soap? Surrounded by such evidence of juvenile ignorance, I felt the power of my superior knowledge, the distinction of my new clothes; I wanted to display my talents to shine.
    The screech of the slate pencils had not long begun before the door was flung open and the command given.
    â€˜Rise, children.’
    As we clattered to our feet Pin appeared and deferentially ushered into the classroom a stiff, self-important, overdressed little woman with a bust so swelling and aggressive as to give her, in conjunction with the tuft of feathers on her hat, a marked resemblance to a pouter pigeon. I gazed at her in awe. Lady Meikle was the widow of a Winton corset manufacturer who, behind the blameless but intriguing slogan: ‘Ladies, we use only the finest natural whalebone’, plastered on the hoardings of every railway station—an advertisement that to me ranked in interest equally with ‘The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley Pen, they come as a boon and a blessing to men’—had advanced to considerable wealth, then, after a long term as provost of Levenford, to a knighthood, a distinction that had induced him to purchase and retire to a large property in the vicinity of Ardencaple. Here he had leisure to indulge his hobby of cultivating orchids and tropical plants while his spouse lost no time in assuming the duties and asserting the prerogatives of the lady of the manor, although with her down-to-earth ways and lapses into broad Scots idiom she was not, and freely admitted this, to the manner born. Yet Lady Whalebone, as my father named her, was a decent woman, generous to Ardencaple—she had given the new village hall—and charitable to the entire county. She had moreover a characteristic grim sense of humour and a strong dash of sentiment, since besides giving her lamented husband a magnificent tombstone, replete with many awesome urns, she faithfully maintained and had indeed made famous the orchid collection he had instituted before his decease. Strange though it may appear, while I had never exchanged a word with so exalted a personage, I had good reason to be familiar with her estate in all its extent, with its woods and river, the avenue a mile long winding through the park between giant rhododendrons to the big house with its enormous adjacent conservatory.
    â€˜Be seated, bairns.’ She swept forward. ‘This room is unco’ stuffy. Open a window.’
    Miss Grant hurriedly complied while her ladyship,