f the common children of
Ilkeston. They had shouted after her and thrown stones. Still,
as a teacher, she would be in authority. And it was all unknown.
She was excited. The very forest of dry, sterile brick had some
fascination for her. It was so hard and ugly, so relentlessly
ugly, it would purge her of some of her floating
sentimentality.

She dreamed how she would make the little, ugly children love
her. She would be so personal. Teachers were always so
hard and impersonal. There was no vivid relationship. She would
make everything personal and vivid, she would give herself, she
would give, give, give all her great stores of wealth to her
children, she would make them so happy, and they would prefer
her to any teacher on the face of the earth.

At Christmas she would choose such fascinating Christmas
cards for them, and she would give them such a happy party in
one of the class-rooms.

The headmaster, Mr. Harby, was a short, thick-set, rather
common man, she thought. But she would hold before him the light
of grace and refinement, he would have her in such high esteem
before long. She would be the gleaming sun of the school, the
children would blossom like little weeds, the teachers like
tall, hard plants would burst into rare flower.

The Monday morning came. It was the end of September, and a
drizzle of fine rain like veils round her, making her seem
intimate, a world to herself. She walked forward to the new
land. The old was blotted out. The veil would be rent that hid
the new world. She was gripped hard with suspense as she went
down the hill in the rain, carrying her dinner-bag.

Through the thin rain she saw the town, a black, extensive
mount. She must enter in upon it. She felt at once a feeling of
repugnance and of excited fulfilment. But she shrank.

She waited at the terminus for the tram. Here it was
beginning. Before her was the station to Nottingham, whence
Theresa had gone to school half an hour before; behind her was
the little church school she had attended when she was a child,
when her grandmother was alive. Her grandmother had been dead
two years now. There was a strange woman at the Marsh, with her
Uncle Fred, and a small baby. Behind her was Cossethay, and
blackberries were ripe on the hedges.

As she waited at the tram-terminus she reverted swiftly to
her childhood; her teasing grandfather, with his fair beard and
blue eyes, and his big, monumental body; he had got drowned: her
gr