“I have frequently told you, and the holidays just past have convinced me, that my prime has truly begun. One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full. Mary, what have you got under your desk, what are you looking at?”

Mary sat lump-like and too stupid to invent something. She was too stupid ever to tell a lie, she didn’t know how to cover up.

“A comic, Miss Brodie,” she said.

“Do you mean a comedian, a droll?”

Everyone tittered.

“A comic paper,” said Mary.

“A comic paper, forsooth. How old are you?”

“Ten, ma’am.”

“You are too old for comic papers at ten. Give it to me.”

Miss Brodie looked at the coloured sheets. “Tiger Tim’s forsooth,” she said, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Perceiving all eyes upon it she lifted it out of the basket, tore it up beyond redemption and put it back again.

“Attend to me, girls. One’s prime is the moment one was born for. Now that my prime has begun — Sandy, your attention is wandering. What have I been talking about?”

“Your prime, Miss Brodie.”

“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 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?”

“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 Flanders, and the spot where my lover was laid before you were born. He was poor. He came from Ayrshire, a countryman, but a hardworking 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?”

“That you would live quietly, Miss Brodie,” said Rose Stanley who six years later had a great reputation for sex.