She stared at the paper for a moment and then on the right-hand side, hardly touching the paper at all, wrote:

Granny R. is a witch and the cat is her familiar.

‘Really,’ she said to herself in an expostulatory tone; and spent several minutes tearing the paper into fragments smaller than confetti. Even these she was careful to mix thoroughly with the wet tea-leaves before putting them into the dustbin.

8

ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING ETHEL Rigby returned to school with a handkerchief drenched in eucalyptus, to support the legend of the cold, and some inconspicuous pieces of surgical plaster on her fingers. During the day the frequent – and, Miss Mayfield thought, unnecessary – application of the handkerchief to her nose turned it pink, and once, looking at her, Miss Mayfield was reminded of the theory that people become like the pets to which they are devoted. There was something rabbity about Ethel’s pale prettiness.

By three o’clock in the afternoon Miss Mayfield had become irritated by Ethel, who throughout the day had been markedly inattentive. The Walwyk school furniture was surprisingly modern and functional; each child had a desk with an adjustable top which, could be made to slope or lie flat at will, and between this top and the floor, on the right-hand side, were three open shelves for the accommodation of exercise books, pens, pencils and paints. On four separate occasions during that Monday Miss Mayfield – whose eye returned to Ethel more often than she realized – caught the girl taking out, looking at or hastily replacing some object from her top shelf.

On the fourth occasion she felt that some mild rebuke was called for, so she said:

‘Ethel, you have missed almost two weeks’ work, and you should be working hard to make up. Whatever it is that is diverting your attention, please leave it alone, or I shall have to ask you to put it on my desk.’

Ethel turned scarlet and behaved impeccably for the rest of the session.

At four o’clock, with the class dismissed, again without fully realizing what she was doing or why, Miss Mayfield looked at Ethel Rigby and noted that she was empty-handed. And the moment the door was closed and she was alone with her pile of books to be marked, Miss Mayfield went to Ethel’s desk.