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‘If anyone comes along,’ said Miss Brodie, ‘in the course of the following lesson, remember that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime I will tell you a little of my life when I was younger than I am now, though six years older than the man himself.’ She
‘If anyone comes along,’ said Miss Brodie, ‘in the course of the following lesson, remember that it is the hour for English grammar. Meantime I will tell you a little of my life when I was younger than I am now, though six years older than the man himself.’ She leaned against the elm. It was one of the last autumn days when the leaves were falling 5 in little gusts. They fell on the children who were thankful for this excuse to wriggle and for the allowable movements in brushing the leaves from their hair and laps. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. I was engaged to a young man at the beginning of the War but he fell on Flanders’ Field,’ said Miss Brodie. ‘Are you thinking, Sandy, of doing a day’s washing?’ 10 ‘No, Miss Brodie.’ ‘Because you have got your sleeves rolled up. I won’t have to do with girls who roll up the sleeves of their blouses, however fine the weather. Roll them down at once, we are civilized beings. He fell the week before Armistice was declared. He fell like an autumn leaf, although he was only twenty-two years of age. When we go indoors we shall look on the map at 15 Flanders, and the spot where my lover was laid before you were born. He was poor. He came from Ayrshire, a countryman, but a hard-working and clever scholar. He said, when he asked me to marry him, “We shall have to drink water and walk slow.” That was Hugh’s country way of expressing that we would live quietly. We shall drink water and walk slow. What does the saying signify, Rose?’ 20 ‘That you would live quietly, Miss Brodie,’ said Rose Stanley [. . .]. The story of Miss Brodie’s felled1 fiancé was well on its way when the headmistress, Miss Mackay, was seen to approach across the lawn. Tears had already started to drop from Sandy’s little pig-like eyes and Sandy’s tears now affected her friend Jenny, later famous in the school for her beauty, who gave a sob and groped up the leg of her knickers for her 25 handkerchief. ‘Hugh was killed,’ said Miss Brodie, ‘a week before the Armistice. After that there was a general election and people were saying “Hang the Kaiser!” Hugh was one of the Flowers of the Forest, lying in his grave.’ Rose