She did not attempt to conceal from her munching host her keen interest in the art master. Mr. Lowther’s eyes looked mournful and he ate on. Sandy and Jenny knew that similar questions had been pressed upon Mary Macgregor and Eunice Gardiner the previous week, and upon Rose Stanley and Monica Douglas the week before. But Miss Brodie could not hear enough versions of the same story if it involved Teddy Lloyd, and now that the girls had been to his house — a large and shabby, a warm and unconventional establishment in the north of Edinburgh — Miss Brodie was in a state of high excitement by very contact with these girls who had lately breathed Lloyd air.

“How many children?” said Miss Brodie, her teapot poised.

“Five, I think,” said Sandy.

“Six, I think,” said Jenny, “counting the baby.”

“There are lots of babies,” said Sandy.

“Roman Catholics, of course,” said Miss Brodie, addressing this to Mr. Lowther.

“But the littlest baby,” said Jenny, “you’ve forgotten to count the wee baby. That makes six.”

Miss Brodie poured tea and cast a glance at Gordon Lowther’s plate.

“Gordon,” she said, “a cake.”

He shook his head and said softly, as if soothing her, “Oh, no, no.”

“Yes, Gordon. It is full of goodness.” And she made him eat a Chester cake, and spoke to him in a slightly more Edinburgh way than usual, so as to make up to him by both means for the love she was giving to Teddy Lloyd instead of to him.

“You must be fattened up, Gordon,” she said. “You must be two stone the better before I go my holidays.”

He smiled as best he could at everyone in turn, with his drooped head and slowly moving jaws. Meanwhile Miss Brodie said:

“And Mrs. Lloyd — is she a woman, would you say, in her prime?”

“Perhaps not yet,” said Sandy.

“Well, Mrs. Lloyd may be past it,” Jenny said. “It’s difficult to say with her hair being long on her shoulders. It makes her look young although she may not be.”

“She looks really like as if she won’t have any prime,” Sandy said.

“The word ‘like’ is redundant in that sentence. What is Mrs. Lloyd’s Christian name?”

“Deirdre,” said Jenny, and Miss Brodie considered the name as if it were new to her although she had heard it last week from Mary and Eunice, and the week before that from Rose and Monica, and so had Mr. Lowther. Outside, light rain began to fall on Mr. Lowther’s leaves.

“Celtic,” said Miss Brodie.