Winter fevers

The Christmas holidays had passed away very quickly. On the morning after we had broken up,* I was busy writing Christmas cards, when a hammering had come at the front door.

On the step stood Linda and Anne. Linda carried a small parcel with much care, and when I invited them in she put it on the table among the half-finished cards.

'It's from both of us,' she announced proudly.

It turned out to be a bottle of scent called 'Dusky Allure'. A palm tree and a few stars on the label added point to the title.* The children beamed at me as I unscrewed the top.

'It's simply wonderful!' I told them, when I had got over the coughing attack. 'And very, very kind of you.'

I offered biscuits and lemonade, and they sat on the edges of their chairs, quiet and gratified, while I finished off the cards. In the quiet room the lemonade went down with a gurgle, and the girls exchanged mischievous looks and smiled.

We parted with various good wishes for Christmas and they went away taking with them my cards to post.

On Christmas Eve I had had more visitors. The carol-singers* arrived on a clear, frosty night, bearing three hurricane lamps* on long poles, and pushing a little harmonium which Mrs Pratt played. Mr Annett conducted them most energetically, and in the light of one of the lamps I saw that his brother had brought his flute. The fresh country voices were at their best in the cold night air, and Mr Annett seemed pleased with his choir's efforts.

*

Measles had broken out in the village* when the new term, began. In the infants' room Mrs Finch-Edwards had only twelve children to teach, out of eighteen, and I had only twenty out of twenty-two. The weather was bitterly cold with a strong east wind. The draught in the school was worse than usual, and it gave me a stiff neck.*

The children did not want to go out into the playground and with the weather as it was I doubted whether they would gain much from the airing; but at school they became naughty and quarrelsome. We all longed for the spring, for sunshine and flowers, and the thought that we were only in January made that prospect all the more hopeless.

It was during arithmetic one morning, when I had been teaching the middle group to multiply with two figures,* that John Burton made the astonishing remark: 'I'm done!* Can't do no more!'

He threw his pen down on to the desk, leant back, and closed his eyes. He, as a top group member, had been working quietly at some problems* from the blackboard, and this outburst made us all stop and stare.

'If you can't do any more of those, John,' I said, 'try some from Exercise Six.'

'I've said, ain't I, that I can't do no more?' shouted John, glaring at me. This was quite unlike his usual docile manner and I felt annoyed.

'What nonsense —' I began, when, to my amazement, he burst into tears, resting his head on his arms on the desk.

The children were much shocked that John, the head boy,* the school bellringer, the biggest boy there, should indulge in such childish weakness.

I went over to him and raised his head. It was difficult to tell from the tears if he were feverish or not, but his forehead was burning.

'Have you had measles?'

'No, miss.'

'Is your mother at home?'

'Not till four o'clock.'

I went to see Mrs. Finch-Edwards.

'I'll leave the door open while I take him over to the house, if you keep an eye on them. What about Eileen?'

His sister looked perfectly normal. She had not had measles, but technically she was now in quarantine if, as was fairly obvious, her brother had got it. We decided to compromise by putting her desk in the front, away from the others, for the rest of the day.

John looked very sorry for himself as he lay on the sofa under a rug, with the thermometer protruding from his mouth.*

'Did you say your mother was serving at Sutton's the fish-shop?'

John nodded, as he was gagged with the thermometer.* I looked up the telephone number as we waited, thinking, not for the first time, how sad it is when mothers with young children have to take full-time jobs.*

The thermometer stood at 102 degrees* when I took it from his mouth. I tucked him up more securely in his rug, poked up the fire, and went out into the hall to telephone to his mother.

'Speak to Mrs. Burton?' said a voice, which I supposed to be the fishmonger's. 'She's serving at the moment.'

'This is urgent. Her little boy is ill and she will have to come immediately.'

'It's most inconvenient,' said the fishmonger severely, 'but I'll tell her.'

Mrs Burton was sensible and practical. She would be on the next bus, and intimated that if Mr S., her employer, didn't like it he could lump it.* I went back to tell John the good news, but he had fallen asleep, breathing heavily, his forehead damp with sweat, so I crept out and across to the school.

It is this sort of occasion that makes one realize how absolutely necessary it is for every school, however small, to have two people who can take charge. Without Mrs. Finch-Edwards there to superintend the children, any sort of accident might have happened; and I thought of several schoolmistresses that I knew, in the charge of perhaps twenty or more children, with no adult help within call,* who might be coping at this very moment with such an emergency. It is a position in which no teacher should have to find herself, and yet it is, alas, a common one in our country areas.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16