The Royal Governess by Wendy Holden EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Wendy Holden
- Language: English
- Genre: Biographical Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The classroom was gloomy. Everything was brown, from the desks
with their lids and inkwells to the wooden forms and floorboards. Brown
was the heavy Bakelite clock and brown the picture frame surrounding a
bulge-eyed King George V and a flint-faced Queen Mary. A brown leather
strap, or tawse, jiggled in the schoolmaster’s bony hand. It looked wellworn, as if often used.
The sight of it made Marion wince. Corporal punishment, in her view,
had no place in modern classrooms. Nor, for that matter, had Dr. Stone, the
gaunt and black-gowned schoolmaster whose lesson she was sitting in on.
“I was expecting someone much older,” he had growled at her in greeting.
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“And male.”
Marion could not imagine why Miss Golspie, the college principal, had
sent her to observe such an establishment. Glenlorne was Edinburgh’s most
expensive private prep school. It was for the sons of the city’s wealthy
citizens, who would go on afterward to the major public schools. As Miss
Golspie well knew, none of this appealed to Marion. Her interests were at
the other end of the social scale.
It didn’t help that Dr. Stone kept staring at her hair, and addressed all his
remarks to it, as if making some satirical point. The new short crop was
supposed to look chic, fashionable and emancipated. But did she actually
resemble a skinned rabbit?
“Sit at the back,” Dr. Stone told her hair.
Marion rallied. She had had enough of this. At least she had hair, short
though it was. His ghoulish yellow cranium, on the other hand, had a mere
few greasy strands plastered across it. “If you don’t mind,” she crisply
informed him, “I’d prefer to observe from the front.”
Looking for an unoccupied chair, she spotted one in the shadowy
corner, seat turned to the wall. Through the wooden struts of the chair-back
a tall white cone was visible. As she approached, she saw a letter “D.” She
blinked. Was it possible? In this day and age?
“You are proposing to sit on the dunce’s chair?” The master’s tone
dripped acid amusement.
Marion did not reply. She picked up the humiliating headgear with her
fingertips and dropped it lightly on the floor. Then she took the chair, sat
down calmly and gave the class a smile. Two rows of boys stared back,
round-eyed.
There was a sharp crack as Dr. Stone slapped the tawse on his palm.
The boys jumped slightly in their seats. “This,” he said with obvious
reluctance, “is Miss Crawley.”
“Good morning, Miss Crawley,” chorused the boys.
“Crawford,” she corrected gently. She had fully expected to loathe them,
these little Scottish Fauntleroys. Instead she felt sorry for them. They
looked so sweet, in their little gray blazers. They deserved better than this
old sadist.
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