Instructions

All that summer the children who were due to start junior school in Miss Snell's class had been warned about her. "Boy, you're gonna get it," the older children would say. "You're really gonna get it. Mrs. Cleary's all right," (Mrs. Cleary taught the other, luckier class of new pupils) "she's fine, but boy, that Snell - you better watch out."

So it happened that the anxiety level of Miss Snell's class was high even before school began in September, and she did little in the first few weeks to improve it.

She was probably sixty, a woman with a man's face and clothes that seemed to smell of pencil shavings and chalk dust. She was strict and humourless, determined to stop the things she thought intolerable: "mumbling, daydreaming, frequent trips to the toilets", and the worst of, "coming to school without proper supplies."Her small eyes were sharp, and when somebody sent out a stealthy alarm of whispers and nudges to try to borrow a pencil from somebody else, it almost never worked. What's the trouble back there?" she would snap. "I mean you, John Gerhardt." And John Gerhardt, or Howard White, or whoever it happened to be, could only turn red and say, "Nothing."

"Don't mumble. Is it a pencil? Have you come to school without a pencil again? Stand up when you're spoken to." There would follow a long lecture on Proper Supplies that ended only after the offender had come forward to receive a pencil from the small hoard on her desk and to promise that he wouldn't chew it or break its point.

She seemed to have no favourites; once she even picked on Alice Johnson, who did nearly everything right. Alice was mumbling while reading aloud, and Miss Snell went over and took her book away and lectured her for several minutes running. Alice looked stunned at first, then burst into tears.