t her, telling her the work was not properly done. It
irritated her almost to madness, and she let loose all the
irritation in the class. Then followed a day of battle and hate
and violence, when she went home raw, feeling the golden evening
taken away from her, herself incarcerated in some dark, heavy
place, and chained there with a consciousness of having done
badly at work.

What good was it that it was summer, that right till evening,
when the corncrakes called, the larks would mount up into the
light, to sing once more before nightfall. What good was it all,
when she was out of tune, when she must only remember the burden
and shame of school that day.

And still, she hated school. Still she cried, she did not
believe in it. Why should the children learn, and why should she
teach them? It was all so much milling the wind. What folly was
it that made life into this, the fulfilling of some stupid,
factitious duty? It was all so made up, so unnatural. The
school, the sums, the grammar, the quarterly examinations, the
registers--it was all a barren nothing!

Why should she give her allegiance to this world, and let it
so dominate her, that her own world of warm sun and growing,
sap-filled life was turned into nothing? She was not going to do
it. She was not going to be a prisoner in the dry, tyrannical
man-world. She was not going to care about it. What did it
matter if her class did ever so badly in the quarterly
examination. Let it--what did it matter?

Nevertheless, when the time came, and the report on her class
was bad, she was miserable, and the joy of the summer was taken
away from her, she was shut up in gloom. She could not really
escape from this world of system and work, out into her fields
where she was happy. She must have her place in the working
world, be a recognized member with full rights there. It was
more important to her than fields and sun and poetry, at this
time. But she was only the more its enemy.

It was a very difficult thing, she thought, during the long
hours of intermission in the summer holidays, to be herself, her
happy self that enjoyed so much to lie in the sun, to play and
swim and be content, and also to be a school-teacher getting
results out of a class of children. She dreamed fondly of the
time when she need not be a teacher any more. But vaguely, she
knew that responsibility had taken place in her for ever, and as
yet her prime business was to work.

The autumn passed