d herself of the
man's world, never having achieved the freedom of the great
world of responsible work. Maggie had taken her place there, she
had even stood level with Mr. Harby and got free of him: and her
soul was always wandering in far-off valleys and glades of
poetry. Maggie was free. Yet there was something like subjection
in Maggie's very freedom. Mr. Harby, the man, disliked the
reserved woman, Maggie. Mr. Harby, the schoolmaster, respected
his teacher, Miss Schofield.

For the present, however, Ursula only envied and admired
Maggie. She herself had still to get where Maggie had got. She
had still to make her footing. She had taken up a position on
Mr. Harby's ground, and she must keep it. For he was now
beginning a regular attack on her, to drive her away out of his
school. She could not keep order. Her class was a turbulent
crowd, and the weak spot in the school's work. Therefore she
must go, and someone more useful must come in her place, someone
who could keep discipline.

The headmaster had worked himself into an obsession of fury
against her. He only wanted her gone. She had come, she had got
worse as the weeks went on, she was absolutely no good. His
system, which was his very life in school, the outcome of his
bodily movement, was attacked and threatened at the point where
Ursula was included. She was the danger that threatened his body
with a blow, a fall. And blindly, thoroughly, moving from strong
instinct of opposition, he set to work to expel her.

When he punished one of her children as he had punished the
boy Hill, for an offence against himself, he made the
punishment extra heavy with the significance that the extra
stroke came in because of the weak teacher who allowed all these
things to be. When he punished for an offence against her, he
punished lightly, as if offences against her were not
significant. Which all the children knew, and they behaved
accordingly.

Every now and again Mr. Harby would swoop down to examine
exercise books. For a whole hour, he would be going round the
class, taking book after book, comparing page after page, whilst
Ursula stood aside for all the remarks and fault-finding to be
pointed at her through the scholars. It was true, since she had
come, the composition books had grown more and more untidy,
disorderly, filthy. Mr. Harby pointed to the pages done before
her regime, and to those done after, and fell into a passion of
rage. Many children he sent out t