In the little red brick Methodist chapel is set a small memorial plaque: ‘In Memory of May Shipstone, the lost and forgotten child of one of the earlier missionaries. This is the chapel in which May’s father had preached. Linda Uttley comes to Sunday School. Miss Bamford sits in the pew of the Methodist chapel in town wearing a jaunty crimson felt hat on her head. Ruth Allen and Elsie Shire never wear hats to church. Great, braided coils of hair are ringed round Ruth’s ears. Elsie Shire wears her white hair shingled.

Christina delivers her message and watches the caterpillar on the leaf eating little bits of the garden. Miss Allen, as she scoops the papaw with the silver spoon, becomes the lost child in the woods, relives the tale of Hansel and Gretel, becomes a fawn, a fairy. They believe in fairies, these children, and spend hours making fairy gardens in the school hostel—little, magical, enchanted gardens with silver wands and toadstools and little wine cups and plates for those invisible, airy beings that visit on a moonlit night.

Christina’s father has sent a star tortoise that lives among the flower beds; and the water diviner comes from England with her willow wand and walks over the lawn of the hostel garden. Secret springs are hidden here. The willow wand quivers as she walks over the grass.

Gravely, Christina takes leave of Ruth Allen who will complete her breakfast and come down the steps to the big hall for school assembly. It is a daily ritual. The girls file in through the doors which lead from the hall verandahs, demure in crisp, starched white uniforms of pique and cotton from the Manchester and Lancashire mills. White socks neatly folded over the ankles. Canvas shoes pipe-clayed in white on drill days and country dance days—‘Hunston House’ and ‘Gathering Peascods’; school tie, badges, not a pin to be seen (or marks would be cut off); faces open and innocent, hair cropped, clipped and braided. Elsie Schoorman is not allowed to go up the platform to receive her prize on prize-giving day as she has had her hair permed for the occasion. n Prize Day Annie Reith, Elaine Fairweather, Elsie Schoorman, all the big girls wear ankle-length dresses, sweeping with frills up to their ankles. Christina and her sister wear ivory-white fugi silk with delicate smocking at the waist, pearl buttons and Peter Pan collars. Christina wins many prizes. She likes the Julia Bartholomeusz Memorial Prize for General Intelligence—S. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Her dead aunt’s prize for Courtesy she never wins: The Elsie Jansz Memorial Prize for courtesy given by the sisters. Elsie Grenier-Jansz had died very young. Auburn haired, blue-eyed Elsie Jansz.

The children sit on the rough coir mats that are spread out in rows on the floor. Dorothy Poulier lifts Christina’s heavy black plaits and holds them in her hands, feeling their thickness and weight.