She and Ewan were indifferent, polite, Chris thought them too much alike to take heed of each other. But Miss Lyon couldn’t abide her at all, and would sniff as she watched her, Just a Vulgar Flirt, she didn’t let men take Liberties with her. She told this to Chris after breakfast one day, didn’t Mrs Colquohoun think the Johns girl Common? And Chris smiled at her sweet, I don’t know, Miss Lyon. You see I’m awfully common myself.

The first bit of scandal on the pussy-cat Chris heard was brought by Miss Murgatroyd, she had heard it up at the Unionist Ladies—it was awful, and Miss Johns looking Such Genteel. And what the Tory women had been saying was that the new teacher in the Ecclesgriegs Middle was being over-quick with the strap, strict as could be, maybe not a bad fault. But worse than that she was telling the bairns the queerest and dirtiest things, Mrs Colquohoun, drawing pictures on the blackboard of people’s insides and how their food was digested and oh—And Miss Murgatroyd coloured over with Shame, and dropped her voice and nearly her cup—the way that the waste comes out, you know.

Chris said she thought that was maybe good and the bairns would be less constipated. Miss Murgatroyd tweetered like a chicken in the rain, and then bridled a wee, Well, of course I’m Single, and don’t know much about things like that. Chris wanted to ask, but didn’t, if being Single meant that you never went to the bathroom; but a question like that wouldn’t have been Such Fine.

But more was to come, as she heard soon enough, the Unionist Ladies in an awful stew, and hot to write the Education Authority. Miss Johns had been explaining the Bible away, the whole tale told to Miss Murgatroyd by Mrs Gawpus, the wife of Bailie Gawpus, she said her little niece had come home and said there wasn’t a God at all, the new teacher had said so or as good as said so, He was just a silly old man the Jews worshipped and the world had really begun in a fire…. Just Rank Materialism, wasn’t it, now?—And who would think it of a girl like Miss Johns?

She told the same story to Ma Cleghorn that night, but got feint the much petting for her pains. Well, damn’t, there’s maybe some sense in her say, Miss Murgatroyd, the Bible’s no canny. Mind the bit about Lot and his daughters, the foul slummocks, him worse, the randy old ram? It’s better to speak of beginnings in fire than let the weans think it began in a midden. Ay, there’s more in the lass than meets the eye, I’ll have to see how she’s getting on.

Chris met Ellen Johns a week after that, coming up the stairs, her dark face pale, she smiled at Chris, a tired-looking lass and Chris said she looked tired. She said so she was, though not with the teaching, and then told she’d been summoned before the Authority and reprimanded for telling the Duncairn kids a few elementary facts about themselves. —So I’ve to leave off physiology and it’s Nature Study now—bees, flowers, and how catkins copulate. Won’t that be fun? But she didn’t wait an answer, just smiled in the sleekèd way she had, dark and cool and wise, a mere slip, a little quean playing about with fire, and went on up the stair to the room next Ewan’s.