Chapter One

The classroom was gloomy. Everything was brown, from the desks with their lids and inkwells to the wooden forms and floorboards. Brown was the heavy Bakelite clock and brown the picture frame surrounding a bulge-eyed King George V and a flint-faced Queen Mary. A brown leather strap, or tawse, jiggled in the schoolmaster's bony hand. It looked well-worn, as if often used.

The sight of it made Marion wince. Corporal punishment, in her view, had no place in modern classrooms. Nor, for that matter, had Dr. Stone, the gaunt and black-gowned schoolmaster whose lesson she was sitting in on. "I was expecting someone much older," he had growled at her in greeting. "And male."

Marion could not imagine why Miss Golspie, the college principal, had sent her to observe such an establishment. Glenlorne was Edinburgh's most expensive private prep school. It was for the sons of the city's wealthy citizens, who would go on afterward to the major public schools. As Miss Golspie well knew, none of this appealed to Marion. Her interests were at the other end of the social scale.

It didn't help that Dr. Stone kept staring at her hair, and addressed all his remarks to it, as if making some satirical point. The new short crop was supposed to look chic, fashionable and emancipated. But did she actually resemble a skinned rabbit?

"Sit at the back," Dr. Stone told her hair.

Marion rallied. She had had enough of this. At least she had hair, short though it was. His ghoulish yellow cranium, on the other hand, had a mere few greasy strands plastered across it. "If you don't mind," she crisply informed him, "I'd prefer to observe from the front."

Looking for an unoccupied chair, she spotted one in the shadowy corner, seat turned to the wall. Through the wooden struts of the chair-back a tall white cone was visible. As she approached, she saw a letter "D." She blinked. Was it possible? In this day and age?

"You are proposing to sit on the dunce's chair?" The master's tone dripped acid amusement.

Marion did not reply. She picked up the humiliating headgear with her fingertips and dropped it lightly on the floor. Then she took the chair, sat down calmly and gave the class a smile. Two rows of boys stared back, round-eyed.

There was a sharp crack as Dr. Stone slapped the tawse on his palm. The boys jumped slightly in their seats. "This," he said with obvious reluctance, "is Miss Crawley."

"Good morning, Miss Crawley," chorused the boys.

"Crawford," she corrected gently. She had fully expected to loathe them, these little Scottish Fauntleroys. Instead she felt sorry for them. They looked so sweet, in their little gray blazers. They deserved better than this old sadist.

Another slap of tawse on palm. Another jump. "Miss Crawley is studying to be a teacher and is observing our geography lesson as part of her training." There was a contemptuous emphasis on "teacher" and "training."

From beneath their crested caps, the boys continued to stare at her curiously. Marion continued to smile brightly back. Take no notice of that rude old fossil, said the smile. Women can take degrees now, they can train for the professions. Tell your sisters! Tell your mothers!

Dr. Stone, having temporarily laid aside the tawse, was writing something on the blackboard. The chalk screeched with the movement of his bony yellow hand. The British Empire, announced the untidy scrawl. From the desk below the...