rather drained the talent from the other clubs that had meetings scheduled this afternoon,” Alice Bjorklund interpreted.
“Only four girls showed up for the Latin Club meeting,” Miss Otis elaborated. “Even last year’s president didn’t attend!”
Mr. Burnham took his pipe out of his mouth. “You got me beat, Bunny,” he called from the other side of the room. “Only three came to the Diggers’ meeting—”
“Metamora’s archaeology club,” Mona murmured to Bobby.
“—and the girls seemed so genuinely interested when I announced it in class,” the History Master concluded wistfully.
Bobby recalled now the notices of extracurricular activities sprinkled through The Metamora Musings, or posted on the bulletin board outside the dining room, or announced by Miss Craybill at lunch. In addition to the school newspaper, the literary magazine, and the Young Integrationists Club, there were the Daughters of the American Pioneers Society, the Non-Objectivist Society, study groups, the Prefecture, choruses, a drama troupe—Bobby couldn’t remember them all. Somehow the gym teacher hadn’t thought of the Savages as competing against the more established staff-sponsored activities, but there was a definite feeling of competition in the faculty room, with memberships the objective, instead of goals.
Even Laura Burnham, who’d draped herself languidly on a window seat and was leafing through a fashion magazine, drawled, “I s’pose I’m lucky I scheduled the Young Abstract Expressionists for Friday afternoon instead of Thursday.”
“The Young Integrationists and I joined the throng on the hockey field,” Hoppy Fiske told her, with a touch of complacency. “In a cooperative club like ours, one learns to move with the current, instead of fight against it.”
“Come, come, none of this is Bobby’s fault!” Mona chided the miffed teachers. “Girls will be girls. Field hockey is a novelty to them—as is Bobby—and so they flock to her—I mean it.”
“I myself do not see the point of all these cloobs,” said Madame Melville, the French Mistress. She sat a little apart from the other teachers, wreathed in blue smoke as she corrected French exercises. While the other teachers drank the sherry Mona provided, Madame Melville’s glass mysteriously held a pale green liquid.
“We are paid to teach them, no?” Her cigarette described a question mark. “Let the girls entertain themselves, or give them more schoolwork if you are afraid of what they might do in their leisure.”
Hoppy and Miss Otis rose to Madame’s bait, as they always did, and under cover of their argument over proper enrichment activities, Mona asked Bobby, “What was the big excitement at the scrimmage?”
Bobby forgot about academic rivalries and her squashed enthusiasm rebounded. “That girl! She’s a natural! A real athletic whiz kid! She picks up plays like she’s picking up loose change! I bet she could play any position I put her in! And drive! She’s a tank! The other players give way or get mowed down! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Bobby’s voice had risen with her excitement and Hoppy broke off her defense of extracurricular activities to ask curiously, “Who is this prodigy?”
“The other girls called her Angle,” Bobby looked down at her roster. “Her full name is—”
“Angela Cohen O’Shea!” chorused the other teachers, the expressions on their faces ranging from amusement to sympathy.
“You’ve got the tiger by the tail with that one, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Burnham, nodding his head and sucking his pipe with a trace of smugness.
“Why, what’s the matter with her?”
“She’s a troublemaker,” said Miss Otis succinctly. “She’s been late to chapel almost every Sunday, and when I gave her a demerit and a warning the last time, she had the audacity to tell me she’s an atheist and shouldn’t have to attend at all!”
“Smoking in her bedroom, never observes lights-out. We had to move her to a single after she worked poor Shirley Sarvis into a state of hysterics with her lurid description of the miseries of the migrant farm workers,” put in Mr. Burnham.
“Her accent is ’orreeble,” observed Madame Melville impartially.
“She’s very bright,” put in Miss Bjorklund timidly. “But she won’t do the work. I’m afraid she’ll fail English.”
Ken Burnham took the pipe out of his mouth. “Oh, she’s bright enough, but she only puts her mind to work making trouble. She told my American history class that it was the pioneers that massacred the Indians at Mesquakie Point, not the reverse. Completely disrupted my lesson plan. A couple of the DAP girls were in tears! I thought Beryl Houck might hit her.”
“Why is she such a problem?” Bobby wondered.
“Well, she’s a transfer student, and most of our girls have been here since third form,” Mona explained. “She came to Metamora last semester, after her enrollment at St. Margaret Mary’s, er, didn’t work out. She’s a high-spirited girl, with very definite opinions. Girls will be girls, after all.”
“And there are problems at home,” added Ken Burnham solemnly.
“D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” Miss Otis spelled it out. “These mixed marriages often run into trouble. Young couples think that love will conquer all, but what happens when they’re attending different churches every Sunday? Or in this case,” she lowered her voice, “a temple?”
“Those of the Jewish faith worship on Saturday,” instructed Hoppy.
“I don’t think either of the O’Sheas worships at all,” Mona said practically. “Mr. O’Shea is a labor organizer and Mrs. O’Shea is active in the theater. Perhaps we shouldn’t speculate about Angela’s home life.”
“Miss Rasphigi thinks well of her.” Enid spoke up for the first time. She was sitting in the armchair opposite Madame Melville, correcting homework papers with mechanical efficiency, her glass of sherry untouched on the table beside her. “She’s very quick to learn when the subject interests her, as our Games Mistress observed.”
Bobby sat up. Here was an unexpected ally. Perhaps Angle would be the bridge between her and the attractive, yet distant algebra teacher. Perhaps after dinner she would suggest to young Miss Butler that the two of them could put their heads together over the unhappy adolescent. With her teaching knowledge, Enid Butler would surely have some ideas—she probably knew Adolescent Development Patterns by heart, a textbook Bobby had only skimmed.
“However, to return to Miss Otis’s earlier point, I do think we ought to consider the disruptive potential of this addition to Metamora’s sports program. We must be certain it doesn’t threaten Metamora’s academic priorities.”
Bobby’s nascent hopes died a sudden death. She wasn’t positive, but it sounded like the Math Mistress was against field hockey!
“Group processes can be a valuable way of teaching life skills, when properly done. However, it’s essential to be up to date on methodology.” Enid rounded on the young coach suddenly. “You’ve seen ‘Effective Grouping and the Lone Teacher’ in the last issue of Secondary Pedagogy, haven’t you?”
Bobby gulped and lied. “Of course!”
“‘Group processes are not without danger, and only the naïve teacher will fail to carefully consider class dynamics and antisocial currents, which have the potential to turn the group into a mob.’ Quite a provocative statement, isn’t it?”
Bobby looked around the room. Many of the teachers had a thoughtful air, as if they were considering their group processes in a new, critical light. Bobby wished desperately that Bryce and Ole were there—Bryce had a joking way that lightened serious discussions, and although Ole never said much, Bobby felt sure of his silent support for Metamora’s increased activity in sports. However, the two friends seldom came to sherry hour, preferring to take long nature