Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 15 стр.

       Good heavens, what could be more tragic than that lament!
Every note was a sigh, a sob, a groan of awful mournfulness. Miss
Meadows lifted her arms in the wide gown and began conducting
with both hands “...I feel more and more strongly that our marriage
would be a mistake,” she beat. And the voices cried: Fleetly! Ah, fleetly.
What could hàvå possessed him to write such a letter? What could have
led up to it? It came out of nothing. His last letter had been all about
a fumed oak bookcase he had bought for “our” books, and a “natty
little hallstand” he had seen, “a very neat affair with a carved owl on
a bracket, holding three hat-brushes in its claws”. How she had drilled
at that! So like a man to think one needed three hat-brushes! From the
listening ear, sang the voices.
       “Once again,” said Miss Meadows. “But this time in parts. Still
without expression.” Fast! Ah, too fast. With the gloom of the contral-
tos added, one could scarcely help shuddering. Fade the roses of
pleasure. Last time he had come to see her, Basil had worn a rose in
his buttonhole. How handsome he had looked in that bright blue suit,
with that dark red rose! And he knew it, too. He couldn’t help know-
ing it. First he stroked his hair, then his moustache; his teeth gleamed
when he smiled.
       “The headmaster’s wife keeps on asking me to dinner. It’s a
perfect nuisance. I never get an evening to myself in that place.”
       “But can’t you refuse?”
       “Oh, well, it doesn’t do for a man in my position to be
unpopular.”
       Music’s gay measure, wailed the voices. The willow trees, out-
side the high, narrow windows, waved in the wind. They had lost
half their leaves. The tiny ones that clung wriggled like fishes caught
on a line. “¾I am not a marrying man¾” The voices were silent; the
piano waited.
       “Quite good,” said Miss Meadows, but still in such a strange,
stony tone that the younger girls began to feel positively frightened.
“But now that we know it, we shall take it with expression. As much
expression as you can put into it. Think of the words, girls. Use your
imaginations. Fast! Ah, too fast,” cried Miss Meadows. “That ought to
break out — a loud, strong forte — a lament. And then in the second
line, Winter drear, make that drear sound as if a cold wind were
blowing through it. Dre-ear!” said she so awfully that Mary Beazley,
on the music stool, wriggled her spine. “The third line should be one

                                 – 15 –