She said, rather tentatively, ‘Once, in Alchester, we did little scenes from history – very simple: Raleigh spreading his cloak for Queen Elizabeth; Charles the First going to his beheading, and so on. Do you think they’d find that kind of thing dull?’

‘If you but knew! No, I’m sure they’d be delighted. You’d need a lot of costumes, but you can always hire those.’

‘We could make some. You see, that wouldn’t link it with the sewing as well as the history lessons. I really am a great believer in correlation, though I believe that is frowned upon now as being old-fashioned.’

‘I think that is a splendid idea – just so long as you don’t undertake too much and make a chore of it.’

The girls had taken eagerly to the idea of making costumes instead of dull everyday garments. Audrey Head, whose mother was the village dressmaker, proved to be an expert and rapid worker on the sewing machine, and during the sewing lesson with which the week always closed, on a date which Miss Mayfield remembered – the twenty-ninth of May – Audrey was very anxious to have a fitting. One of the garments sufficiently advanced to be fitted was the black one in which Ethel Rigby, as Mary Queen of Scots, was to appear.

Miss Mayfield, who was eager for the girls themselves to take the responsibility for the costumes, remained in the background while they bustled excitedly about, bossed by Audrey, who presently said:

‘Come on, Ethel. This is yours.’

‘Can’t I try it on over my jumper? Save pulling my hair about.’

‘No, you can’t. This is going to fit. Bother your hair; I’ll lend you my comb afterwards.’ With the black dress, looking very long and limp, hanging over her arm, Audrey advanced purposefully towards Ethel, who backed away.

‘I don’t want you pulling me about, Audrey Head,’ she said sullenly. ‘Here, give it to me.’

She snatched the dress and retreated until she was standing with her back to the wall, and there she carefully removed her jersey and skirt and stepped into the dress, contorting herself in order to work the long zipper at the back of it. Miss Mayfield and Audrey, in conference, had decided to allow the anachronism in order to facilitate ease in changing.

Over Miss Mayfield’s mind there rippled a thought which had nothing to do with Ethel in her capacity as old Mrs Rigby’s granddaughter; it was a self-congratulatory thought. I chose well, she said to herself; she is just that degree less buxom than any of the others; she might very well have ‘sat out her twenty years at Fotheringhay’. All the girls, indeed, were altered by their costumes, but Ethel was transformed into beauty and a kind of sad dignity.

Miss Mayfield said: