our Greek Mistress,” whispered Mona. “She graduated from Metamora in 1904. We won’t wake her.” The two women stood and looked at the sleeping Greek Mistress respectfully before moving on.
“Bryce, Ole, I’d like you to meet Bobby Blanchard, our new Games Mistress.” Bobby was struck by the contrast between the two men who stood up politely from the Victorian love seat. Bryce was a short, plump man who wore his hair rather long and sported a sky blue tie, with white and yellow flowers. Ole’s tanned, deeply grooved face and the swelling biceps that strained the fabric of his short-sleeved shirt spoke of an active outdoor life.
“How do you do,” the two men chorused.
“Bryce Bowles is our Biology Master—”
“But I prefer botany,” the teacher interrupted, beaming.
“—And Olaf Amundsen is Metamora’s groundskeeper.” Mona added in an undertone, “The Amundsen family has kept the grounds since Metamora was founded.”
“Let me know if you want any changes to the athletic field, Miss Blanchard,” Olaf told her.
“Thank you,” said Bobby gratefully. “Call me Bobby.” It was restful to find herself talking about something she knew. “How often do you chalk—”
“Well, if it isn’t the other members of Metamora’s Men’s Club!” Bobby’s question was interrupted by a man with horn-rimmed glasses, a pipe clenched between his teeth, and a shock of bushy brown hair. Laura Burnham, the Art Mistress, drifted along in his wake. “Howsa fella?”
“Hello, Ken,” said Bryce Bowles politely. Ole Amundsen said nothing.
“Bobby, I’d like you to meet Ken Burnham, our History Master. You’ve met his wife, Laura, of course. Bad Laura, leaving Bobby to wander the campus all alone! Bobby Blanchard, our new Games Mistress.”
It had never occurred to Bobby that the Art Mistress was married—and Ken Burnham made it seem even more unlikely.
“Welcome, Bobbi—may I call you Bobbi?” Ken shook Bobby’s hand vigorously. “Welcome to Metamora! Laura and I are back for our fourth year and we just think it’s a great old school—don’t we, honeybun?”
“Certainly, darling,” said Laura with a smile that showed all her teeth. Bobby thought that no one had ever looked less like a honeybun. “It’s Bobby with a ‘y,’” she corrected the History Master.
“My apologies! Are you interested in mounds, by any chance?” Ken asked her.
“Mounds?” Bobby repeated, her eyes wandering to Laura. The Biology Master and groundskeeper had slipped away.
“Indian burial mounds. This part of the country’s full of ’em!”
“Beware, Bobby, Ken has a deep passion for tribal history!” Mona trilled a little laugh. “Oh, Enid!” She pulled a dark-haired woman into the group. “I’d like you to meet our new Games Mistress. Bobby Blanchard, Enid Butler, our new Math Mistress.”
“How do you do?” said Enid, turning her head to expel a lungful of smoke. She wore black cat’s-eye glasses and her dark hair was the color of polished ebony. Her bangs bisected her pale forehead in a precise line and she wore a severely simple brown dress.
So this was the new Math Mistress! “It’s nice to meet another rookie,” said Bobby enthusiastically.
“I’m not precisely a ‘rookie.’ I’ve taught summer session at the Friendship School in Bay City the past two years,” Enid corrected her coolly.
“Oh!” I’m being too sensitive, Bobby told herself. She didn’t mean to snub me. “Well, I’m an absolute beginner, except for some assistant coaching in college. Truthfully, I’m feeling a little nervous about Tuesday.” Tuesday was the first day of classes.
“You’ll be fine,” said Ken heartily, with a wave of his pipe. Did he ever light it? Bobby wondered. Perhaps Miss Craybill frowned on pipe smoking as well as drinking. “Just think of the Iroquois prisoners, forced to run the gauntlet!”
“And when you teach something as basic as gym, you can always tell them to do laps when you run out of material,” Enid added. “That’s what my high school gym teacher used to do.”
“It’s not—there’s much more involved than laps.” Bobby was shaken. Is this girl deliberately insulting me? “If you graduated from high school thinking that’s all there was to gym, you certainly must have gotten a bum specimen of a physical education instructor!”
“I didn’t mind,” Enid assured her. “I’d work on proofs for geometry in my head as I jogged.”
“You know, the Menominee exported wild rice and must have had some system of mathematical accounting,” Ken began, and Enid turned to him politely.
As Ken droned on, Bobby noticed that Laura had disappeared again, and that even Mona’s bright smile of interest was becoming fixed. Covertly, she looked around the room. Maybe she didn’t need to worry about purchasing more feminine clothing. Miss Rapp was wearing tailored scarlet slacks, which emphasized her generous hips. Valkyrie—that was the word. Hoppy Fiske—laughing now with Bryce Bowles—had paired a pale blue sweater set with a wrinkled fiesta skirt. Bryce’s golf pants were as flamboyant as his tie, while Miss Otis, Bobby realized, was clad in the Metamora school uniform: charcoal gray skirt with red piping, white blouse with red tie. She was deep in conversation with Miss Craybill, the Headmistress who’d interviewed Bobby in Bay City. When Ken paused for breath, Bobby suggested to Mona, “Maybe I should go say hello to Miss Craybill.”
“Excellent idea,” Mona cried, coming to life instantly, and they made their escape, leaving only the irritating Enid to the minutiae of Menominee mathematics.
“Isn’t Enid stunning?” Was that a knowing nudge the housekeeper gave Bobby? “And she’s brilliant, really brilliant! One of the up-and-coming math minds, her advisor told Miss Craybill.”
Bobby imagined Mona describing her to other teachers as a brilliant physical education instructor.
“Miss Craybill!” caroled Mona, interrupting the headmistress’s conversation with Miss Otis. “Here’s Bobby Blanchard, at last!”
Miss Craybill took Bobby’s hand in both of hers. “Welcome, Miss Blanchard, welcome.” She was a small woman, her pepper-and-salt hair in an old-fashioned bun. When they had first met she had reminded Bobby of one of those plump little birds that cocks its head and looks at you with bright eyes. Now, however, her gaze wandered as she asked, “Your rooms are comfortable? I’m so glad. And the gymnasium? Of course you haven’t had time to visit our physical education facilities yet. Not to worry. Mona’s given you the keys?”
“Not yet, but I will, Miss Craybill,” Mona answered for her. She added to Bobby, “Maybe it will soothe your jitters to look at Miss Fayne’s records from last year.”
“Jitters?” Miss Craybill’s eyes stopped roving the room distractedly and focused fully on the young Games Mistress for the first time. “Now, you’re not to feel nervous! Not in the least. I trust Miss Watkins’s recommendation implicitly. Implicitly.”
“Oh, I’m not really that worried,” Bobby was embarrassed. “I’ve done some work over the summer, and I came up with some lesson plans I think will be real—corkers!” She fished the Anglicism out of her memory triumphantly.
“Excellent, excellent!”
“One is on timekeeping in history.” Bobby warmed to her subject. She’d show Miss Craybill she could be as intellectual as the rest of the faculty. “First I’d invite”—That was something she’d learned in her pedagogy class, you were never supposed to tell the student to do something, you were supposed to “invite” him. It seemed silly to Bobby, because if the student was in class and you were the teacher, it wasn’t like he could refuse your invitation. But she used the word in her lesson plans religiously—“I’d