We must keep up to a certain standard of efficiency in the staff.

Miss Quincey is getting past her work." (Rhoda became instantly absorbed in sharpening a pencil.) "For the last two terms she has been constantly breaking down; and now I'm very much afraid she is breaking-up." The Head remained solemnly unconscious of her own epigram.
"No wonder," said Rhoda to herself, "first love at fifty is new wine in old bottles; everybody knows what happens to the bottles." The flush and the frown on the Classical Mistress's face might have been accounted for by the sudden snapping of the pencil.
"You see," continued Miss Cursiter, as if defending herself from some accusation conveyed by the frown, "as it is we have kept her on a long while for her sister's sake." (A murmur from the Classical Mistress.) "Of course we must put it to her prettily, wrap it up--in tissue paper." (The Classical Mistress is still inarticulate.) "You are not giving me your opinion." "It seems to me I've said a great deal more than I've any right to say." "Oh you.

We know all about that.

I asked for your opinion." "And when I gave it you told me I was under an influence." "What if I did?
And what if it were so ?" "What indeed?
You would get the benefit of two opinions instead of one." Now if Miss Cursiter were thinking of Dr.Cautley there was some point in what Rhoda said; for in the back of her mind the Head had a curious respect for masculine judgment.
"There can be no two opinions about Miss Quincey." "I don't know.

Miss Quincey," said Rhoda thoughtfully to her pencil, "is a large subject." "Yes, if you mean that Miss Quincey is a terrible legacy from the past.
The question for me is--how long am I to let her hamper our future ?" "The future?
It strikes me that we're not within shouting distance of the future.