Sidwell's. It
came with a tramp and a rustle and a hiss and a tramp, urged to a trot by
the excited teachers. The First Division first, half-woman, carrying
itself smoothly, with a swish of its long skirts, with a blush, a dreamy
intellectual smile, or a steadfast impenetrable air, as it happened to be
more or less conscious of the presence of the Head. Then the Second
Division, light-hearted, irrepressible, making a noise with its feet,
loose hair flapping, pig-tails flopping to the beat of its march. Then
the straggling, diminishing lines of the Third, a froth of white
pinafores, a confusion of legs, black or tan, staggering, shifting,
shuffling in a frantic effort to keep time.
On it came in a waving stream; a stream that flickered with innumerable
eyes, a stream that rippled with the wind of its own flowing, that
flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards,
or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A stream
that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely or
luminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing that
throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance and
pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judged
St.
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