Encounters: stories Read Free Page A

if nothing better. But here—how ever can one, teaching at a High School? Miss Peterson would
    "They do like me. At least, one set does, I know. I'm rather a cult, they appreciate my Titian hair. They'd like me more, though, if I knew how to do it better, and knew better how to use my eyes. Their sentimentality embarrasses me. In a way they're so horribly mature, I feel at a disadvantage with them. If only they'd be a little more spontaneous. But spontaneity is beyond them at present. They're simply calves, after all, rather sophisticated calves."
    She dreamed, and was awakened by familiar laughter. Nobody's laughter in particular, but surely it was the laughter of the High School? Three girls were passing with arms close linked, along the pavement underneath her window. She looked down on the

    expressive, tilted ovals of their sailor hats; then, on an impulse, smacked the window-sill to attract their attention. Instantly they turned up three pink faces of surprise, which broadened mto smiles of recognition.
    "Hullo, Miss Murcheson!"
    "Hullo, children! Come in for a minute and talk to me. I'm all alone."
    Millicent, Rosemary and Doris hesitated, eyeing one another, poised for flight."Righto I"they agreed unanimously.
    Miss Murcheson, all of a flutter, went round to open the front door. She looked back at the sitting-room as though she had never seen it before.
    Why had she asked them in, those terrible girls whom she had scarcely spoken to? They would laugh at her, they would tell the others.
    The room was full of them, of their curiosity and embarrassment and furtive laughter. She had never realised what large girls they were; how plump and well-developed. She felt them eyeing her stack of outraged relatives, the photographs she swept off on to a chair; their eyes flitted from the photographs 22

    to the daffodils, from the daffodils to the open, red-scored exercise books.
    "Yes,"she said,"your writings, I daresay. Do you recognise them? I was correcting ' Daffodils ' and they made me dreary—sit down, won't you?— dreary. I wonder if any of you have ever used your senses; smelt, or seen things Oh, do sit down!"
    She seemed to be shouting into a forest of thick bodies. They seated themselves along the edge of an ottoman in a bewildered row; this travestied their position in the class-room and made her feel,facing them, terribly official and instructive. She tried to shake this off.
    "It's cruel, isn't it, to lie in wait for you like this and pull you in and lecture you about what you don't feel about daffodils!"
    Her nervous laughter tinkled out into silence.
    "It was a beastly subject,"said someone, heavily.
    "Beastly? Oh, Mill—Rosemary, have you never seen a daffodil?"
    They giggled.
    "No, but looked at one?"Her earnestness swept aside her embarrassment."Not

    just heard about them—' Oh yes, daffodils: yellow flowers; spring, mother's vases, bulbs, borders, flashing past flower-shop w indows '—but taken one up in your hands and felt it?"
    How she was haranguing them!
    "It's very difficult to be clever about things one's used to,"said Millicent."That's why history essays are so much easier. You tell us about things, and we just write them down."
    "That's why you're so lazy; you're using my brains; just giving me back what I gave you again, a little bit the worse for the wear."
    They looked hurt and uncomfortable.
    Doris got up and walked over to the fireplace.
    ("Good,"thought Miss Murcheson, "it will relieve the tension a bit if they wall only begin to prowl.")
    "What a pretty photograph. Miss Murcheson. Who is it? Not—not you?"
    "Me?"said Miss Murcheson with amusement. "Yes. Why not? Does it surprise you, then?"

    "You've got such a dinky hat on!"cried the girl, with naive astonishment.
    The others crowded round her.
    "You look so different,"said Doris, still scrutinising the photograph."Awfully happy, and prosperous, and—cocksure."
    "Perhaps it was the hat!"suggested Millicent.
    "Oh, Millicent! No, I'm sure