"Am I early?" she asked.
The man looked first at a little clock, then at her. His eyes
seemed to be sharpened to needle-points of vision.
"Twenty-five past," he said. "You're the second to come. I'm
first this morning."
Ursula sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair, and watched
his thin red hands rubbing away on the white surface of the
paper, then pausing, pulling up a corner of the sheet, peering,
and rubbing away again. There was a great heap of curled
white-and-scribbled sheets on the table.
"Must you do so many?" asked Ursula.
Again the man glanced up sharply. He was about thirty or
thirty-three years old, thin, greenish, with a long nose and a
sharp face. His eyes were blue, and sharp as points of steel,
rather beautiful, the girl thought.
"Sixty-three," he answered.
"So many!" she said, gently. Then she remembered.
"But they're not all for your class, are they?" she
added.
"Why aren't they?" he replied, a fierceness in his voice.
Ursula was rather frightened by his mechanical ignoring of
her, and his directness of statement. It was something new to
her. She had never been treated like this before, as if she did
not count, as if she were addressing a machine.
"It is too many," she said sympathetically.
"You'll get about the same," he said.
That was all she received. She sat rather blank, not knowing
how to feel. Still she liked him. He seemed so cross. There was
a queer, sharp, keen-edge feeling about him that attracted her
and frightened her at the same time. It was so cold, and against
his nature.
The door opened, and a short, neutral-tinted young woman of
about twenty-eight appeared.
"Oh, Ursula!" the newcomer exclaimed. "You are here early! My
word, I'll warrant you don't keep it up. That's Mr. Williamson's
peg. This is yours. Standard Five teacher always has this.
Aren't you going to take your hat off?"
Miss Violet Harby removed Ursula's waterproof from the peg on
which it was hung, to one a little farther down the row. She had
already snatched the pins from her own stuff hat, and jammed
them through her coat. She turned to Ursula, as she pushed up
her frizzed, flat, dun-coloured hair.
"Isn't it a beastly morning," she exclaimed, "beastly! And if
there's one thing I hate above another it's a wet Monday
morning;--pack of kids trailing in anyhow-nohow, and no
holding 'em----"
She had taken a black pinafore from a newspaper package, and
was tying it round her waist.
"You've brought an apron, haven't you?" she said jerkily,
glancing at Ursula. "Oh--you'll want one. You've no idea
what a sight you'll look before half-past four, what with chalk
and ink and kids' dirty feet.--Well, I can send a boy down
to mamma's for one."