“Who are the gang, this time?” said Rose, who was famous for sex-appeal.

“We shall discuss tomorrow night the persons who oppose me,” said Miss Brodie. “But rest assured they shall not succeed.”

“No,” said everyone. “No, of course they won’t.”

“Not while I am in my prime,” she said. “These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one’s prime, always remember that. Here is my tram car. I daresay I’ll not get a seat. This is nineteen-thirty-six. The age of chivalry is past.”

Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress’s study. The door was wide open, the room was empty.

“Little girls,” said Miss Brodie, “come and observe this.”

They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man’s big face. Underneath were the words “Safety First.”

“This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,” said Miss Brodie. “Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan ‘Safety First.’ But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.”

This was the first intimation, to the girls, of an odds between Miss Brodie and the rest of the teaching staff. Indeed, to some of them, it was the first time they had realised it was possible for people glued together in grown-up authority to differ at all. Taking inward note of this, and with the exhilarating feeling of being in on the faint smell of row, without being endangered by it, they followed dangerous Miss Brodie into the secure shade of the elm.

Often, that sunny autumn, when the weather permitted, the small girls took their lessons seated on three benches arranged about the elm.

“Hold up your books,” said Miss Brodie quite often that autumn, “prop them up in your hands, in case of intruders. If there are any intruders, we are doing our history lesson… our poetry… English grammar.”

The small girls held up their books with their eyes not on them, but on Miss Brodie.

“Meantime I will tell you about my last summer holiday in Egypt… I will tell you about care of the skin, and of the hands… about the Frenchman I met in the train to Biarritz… and I must tell you about the Italian paintings I saw. Who is the greatest Italian painter?”

“Leonardo da Vinci, Miss Brodie.”

“That is incorrect. The answer is Giotto, he is my favourite.”

Some days it seemed to Sandy that Miss Brodie’s chest was flat, no bulges at all, but straight as her back. On other days her chest was breast-shaped and large, very noticeable, something for Sandy to sit and peer at through her tiny eyes while Miss Brodie on a day of lessons indoors stood erect, with her brown head held high, staring out of the window like Joan of Arc as she spoke.