The tortoiseshell cat #971810

You could never be quite sure how Mrs. Lysaght would take anything. Even thin Miss Winter, the Secretary, who must have loved her or she could never have stood it, went about her duties murmuring, “I hope I’ve done right....” And, as Miss Fairfax said, you could feel the pit of the poor thing’s stomach sink on hope. Miss Fairfax was a little coarse at times: like a man. It was the result of a classical tripos. Gillian had gathered this from Mrs. Lysaght on the bewildering occasion when she had first received the head mistress’s instructions, at tea. Mrs. Lysaght had been in bed that afternoon.
“I seize every opportunity of rest—facing the light—so revealing—and thick bread and butter—you will not mind, dear.”
Gillian did mind being called “dear,” and the bread and butter was certainly thick; but she was so much engrossed in wondering how Mrs. Lysaght either rested or enjoyed whatever revelation the faced light might bring (though quite in bed) while eating thick bread and butter, interviewing a junior mistress and writing what might be a diary and again might at the same time be a prospectus, with one of those collapsible gold pencils which requires to be un-collapsed every half-page or so, that she missed the next two hundred words—you couldn’t call any of Mrs. Lysaght’s utterances sentences—and only caught up with those on which she left Miss Fairfax.
“Sound scholarship but coarseness—very sad—still the Greeks—and the Romans—passages in the Epistles—and the Joint Board’s set-books this year—Satires, dear—Horace—such a pity—English purity—French refinement—Yours so different.”