Nothing escaped Miss Cursiter; if her face grew tender for the young girls and the eight-year-olds, at the sight of Miss Quincey it stiffened into tolerance, cynically braced to bear.

Miss Cursiter had an eye for magnificence of effect, and the unseemly impact of Miss Quincey was apt to throw the lines into disorder, demoralising the younger units and ruining the spectacle as a whole.
To-day it made the new Classical Mistress smile, and somehow that smile annoyed Miss Cursiter.
She, Miss Quincey, was a little dry, brown woman, with a soft pinched mouth, and a dejected nose.

So small and insignificant was she that she might have crept along for ever unnoticed but for her punctuality in obstruction.

As St.Sidwell's prided itself on the brilliance and efficiency of its staff, the wonder was how Miss Quincey came to be there, but there she had been for five-and-twenty years.

She seemed to have stiffened into her place.