“But I must organise the dear fellow’s food before I go home tonight,” Miss Brodie said in the summer of nineteen-thirty-three while Sandy leaned against the kitchen door with her legs longing to be running along the sea shore. Jenny came and joined her, and together they waited upon Miss Brodie, and saw on the vast old kitchen table the piled-up provisions of the morning’s shopping. Outside on the dining-room table stood large bowls of fruit with boxes of dates piled on top of them, as if this were Christmas and the kitchen that of a holiday hotel.

“Won’t all this give Mr. Lowther a stoppage?” Sandy said to Jenny.

“Not if he eats his greens,” said Jenny.

While they waited for Miss Brodie to dress the great ham like the heroine she was, there came the sound of Mr. Lowther at the piano in the library singing rather slowly and mournfully:

All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell,

Come ye before him and rejoice.

Mr. Lowther was the choir-master and an Elder of the church, and had not yet been quietly advised to withdraw from these offices by Mr. Gaunt the minister, brother of Miss Gaunt, following the finding of the nightdress under the pillow next to his.

Presently, as she put the ham on a low gas and settled the lid on the pot Miss Brodie joined in the psalm richly, contralto-wise, giving the notes more body:

O enter then his gates with praise,

Approach with joy his courts unto.

The rain had stopped and was only now hanging damply within the salt air. All along the sea front Miss Brodie questioned the girls, against the rhythm of the waves, about the appointments of Teddy Lloyd’s house, the kind of tea they got, how vast and light was the studio, and what was said.

“He looked very romantic in his own studio,” Sandy said.

“How was that?”

“I think it was his having only one arm,” said Jenny.

“But he always has only one arm.”

“He did more than usual with it,” said Sandy.

“He was waving it about,” Jenny said. “There was a lovely view from the studio window. He’s proud of it.”

“The studio is in the attic, I presume?”

“Yes, all along the top of the house. There is a new portrait he has done of his family, it’s a little bit amusing, it starts with himself, very tall, then his wife. Then all the little children graded downwards to the baby on the floor, it makes a diagonal line across the canvas.”

“What makes it amusing?” said Miss Brodie.

“They are all facing square and they all look serious,” Sandy said. “You are supposed to laugh at it.”