things which had appealed to her sense of humour during the day, and
it was the recollection of some of these which made her smile
directly she was awake. She tubbed and dressed quickly, although she
had some bother with her hair, which, this morning, seemed intent on
defying the efforts of her fingers. Having dressed herself to her
somewhat exigent satisfaction, she went downstairs, passing the
doors of those venerable virgins, the Misses Helen and Annie Mee, as
she descended to the ground-floor, on which was the schoolroom. This
was really two rooms, but the folding doors, which had once divided
the apartment, had long since been removed from their hinges; they
were now rotting in the strip of garden behind the house.

The appearance of Brandenburg College belied its pretentious name.
Once upon a time, its name-plate had decorated the gates of a
stately old mansion in the Fulham of many years ago; here it was
that Mrs Devitt, then Miss Hilda Spraggs, had been educated. Since
those fat days, the name-plate of Brandenburg College had suffered
many migrations, always in a materially downward direction, till now
it was screwed on the railings of a stuffy little road in Shepherd's
Bush, which, as Mavis was in the habit of declaring, was called West
Kensington Park for "short."

The brass plate, much the worse for wear, told the neighbourhood
that Brandenburg College educated the daughters of gentlemen;
perhaps it was as well that this definition, like the plate, was
fallen on hard times, inasmuch as it was capable of such an elastic
interpretation that it enabled the Misses Mee to accept pupils whom,
in their prosperous days, they would have refused. Mavis looked
round the familiar, shabby schoolroom, with its atmosphere of ink
and slate pencil, to which she was so soon to say "good-bye."