The Brodie set, moreover, had outside interests. Eunice had a boy friend with whom she practised swimming and diving. Monica Douglas and Mary Macgregor went slum-visiting together with bundles of groceries, although Mary was reported to be always making remarks like, “Why don’t they eat cake?” (What she actually said was, “Well, why don’t they send their clothes to the laundry?” when she heard complaints of the prohibitive price of soap.) Jenny was already showing her dramatic talent and was all the time rehearsing for something in the school dramatic society. Rose modelled for Teddy Lloyd and Sandy occasionally joined her, and was watchful, and sometimes toyed with the idea of inducing Teddy Lloyd to kiss her again just to see if it could be done by sheer looking at him insolently with her little eyes. In addition to these activities the Brodie set were meeting Miss Brodie by twos and threes, and sometimes all together after school. It was at this time, in nineteen-thirty-seven that she was especially cultivating Rose, and questioning Sandy, and being answered as to the progress of the great love affair presently to take place between Rose and the art master.

So that they had no time to do much about a delinquent whose parents had dumped her on the school by their influence, even if she was apparently a delinquent in name only. Miss Brodie, however, found time to take her up. The Brodie girls slightly resented this but were relieved that they were not obliged to share the girl’s company, and that Miss Brodie took her to tea and the theatre on her own.

One of Joyce Emily’s boasts was that her brother at Oxford had gone to fight in the Spanish Civil War. This dark, rather mad girl wanted to go too, and to wear a white blouse and black skirt and march with a gun. Nobody had taken this seriously. The Spanish Civil War was something going on outside in the newspapers and only once a month in the school debating society. Everyone, including Joyce Emily, was anti-Franco if they were anything at all.

One day it was realised that Joyce Emily had not been at school for some days, and soon someone else was occupying her desk. No one knew why she had left until, six weeks later, it was reported that she had run away to Spain and had been killed in an accident when the train she was travelling in had been attacked. The school held an abbreviated form of remembrance service for her.

Mary had gone to be a shorthand typist and Jenny had gone to a school of dramatic art. Only four remained of the Brodie set for the last year. It was hardly like being at school at all, there was so much free time, so many lectures and so much library research outside the school building for the sixth-form girls that it was just a matter of walking in and out. They were deferred to and consulted, and had the feeling that they could, if they wished, run the place. headed and merry carnality, and made a good marriage soon after she left school. She shook off Miss Brodie’s influence as a dog shakes pond-water from its coat.