The first lesson of the day ended after one hour. Miss Beeton left the room ... but, previously, had set everyone to learn twenty different lines of Longfellow’s Hiawatha!
“I’ll be testing you when I get back ...”
Silence reigned in the classroom. Every head was bowed.
Concentration was intense. Nowhere more so than amongst those who had just felt Miss Beeton’s strap. They didn’t want another taste!
Anna tried to put pain from her mind and make her brain absorb the words. Oh how difficult it was. Yet, it had to be learnt.
From time to time, she felt rebellious flares of resentment at what she was having to do. However, strenuously, she fought them down. There was no other option than to do as she had been told. To grind her brain to the limit. Other women there had learnt how to do it ... and thus now suffered less.
I must join them, Anna resolved.
I must, I must!
It was the only way ...
From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs —
Oh God, what rubbish it was! Yet Anna knew she must learn it.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis —
Drivel! Yet having to be impinged on the brain. In order to be recited. Unless one wanted the strap. Almost frenziedly, Anna concentrated her mind. She wanted to rage ... to weep ... yet, somehow, she concentrated her mind.
She was beginning to realise that, in Blackfriars Grange, there was no other way except complete mental and physical submission. Hideous as that realisation was, it had to be faced.
Anna wept silent, bitter tears.
Aware of her defeat.
* * *
Click-clack ... click-clack ... click-clack ...
Then, suddenly, Miss Beeton was back. Seated at her desk.
“Attention!”
All heads came up.
“Anna Dobson, report to the Detention Room in pyjamas immediately.”
A freezing sensation in the brain. Almost a loosening of the bowels. Anna remained seated - petrified.
“Did you hear me, girl?”
Anna tried to collect her wits.
“I ... I ... ah ... I mean ... Miss ... but ... why ... w-why ... M-Miss?” Terror was gripping her like a vice.
“Don’t ask questions, girl. Just do as I say!”
Anna was on her feet. Swaying. Panic surging through her. What could it mean? What was it all about? She had done nothing wrong. Nothing which she had not already been punished for. So ... why had she to report to the Detention Room … and why in pyjamas?
Such a dreadful place!
So full of hideous memories!
Anna recalled her last visit and almost screamed.
Then, her ‘school’ uniform clothes neatly folded on the end of her bed, she hurried down again until she came to the door of the Detention Classroom. Heart pounding, Anna knocked timorously.
“Come in ...”
Anna turned the handle and the door swung easily open.
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