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He Came to Close Her School — But She Opened His Heart

He Came to Close Her School — But She Opened His Heart

Chapter 2

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He arrived at nine with Hartley, a notebook, and the pre-written closure notice folded in his breast pocket. The door was open. He could hear the children before he entered—not the undifferentiated noise of children in disorder, but the specific sound of children engaged in something: the question-and-answer cadence of a lesson in progress, punctuated by the occasional voice of the teacher asking something, and the varied responses of many small mouths attempting the answer simultaneously.He stepped into the doorway.There were thirty-seven children in the room. He would count them later and confirm the number, but his first impression was of a room very full of small people who were, against all expectation, paying attention. They were arranged on benches—boys on one side, girls on the other—with the exception of three boys at the back who appeared to have drifted slightly toward the girls' side and had either not been noticed or had been permitted as a social experiment.The slates on the desks showed arithmetic. The arithmetic, as far as he could see from the doorway, was being attempted with genuine effort.The teacher had her back to him. She was speaking to a girl of perhaps nine who had raised her hand, speaking in the tone of a person who is receiving a question that requires a real answer rather than the simplified version. Rothwell stood in the doorway and waited, because interrupting a lesson for the convenience of an inspection struck him as inefficient. He watched the teacher explain, watched the girl's expression move from uncertainty into the specific satisfaction of understanding, and thought: She is good at this.Then the teacher turned.Agnes Burch was perhaps twenty-eight, with a face that was in the process of becoming more interesting as she aged rather than less: strong-boned, direct, with gray eyes that assessed him in the doorway with the speed and thoroughness of a woman who had been assessing adults all her working life, and had become efficient at it.She was not what he had expected. He was not, his expression probably communicated, what she had expected either. What she did with this mutual surprise was instructive.She said, in a voice designed for thirty-seven children that was pitched for his benefit at precisely the level required, "Children, please continue with the third column. I will return in a moment."And then she came to the doorway and said in a different voice—professional, direct, entirely composed, "Lord Rothwell, I am Agnes Burch. Please come in.""Thank you," he said."I thought you might prefer to observe before we speak," she said. "The children are more themselves when an adult is not examining them." She looked at him with those gray eyes. "As, I find, are most people."He had the slight sensation of a man who has entered a room expecting to conduct an inspection and has found himself being assessed. He was not accustomed to this sensation. He was not certain whether he found it irritating or interesting."Please," he said, gesturing for her to lead.She took him through the room: past the arithmetic slates, past the bookshelf at the far end that held the lending library's overflow, past the map of England pinned to the wall with small flags marking places the children had studied. She showed him the materials with the matter-of-fact quality of a woman who has nothing to hide and has organized accordingly, and she explained in complete and unprompted sentences what was being taught, why, and to what result.
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He Came to Close Her School — But She Opened His Heart

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