The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Read Online Free PDF

they should see where history had been lived; and their route had brought them to the Middle Meadow Walk.
    Eunice, unaccompanied at the back, began to hop to a rhyme which she repeated to herself:
    Edinburgh, Leith,
    Portobello, Musselburgh
    And Dalkeith.
    Then she changed to the other foot.
    Edinburgh, Leith …
    Miss Brodie turned round and hushed her, then called forward to Mary Macgregor who was staring at an Indian student who was approaching,
    “Mary, don’t you want to walk tidily?”
    “Mary,” said Sandy, “stop staring at the brown man.”
    The nagged child looked numbly at Sandy and tried to quicken her pace. But Sandy was walking unevenly, in little spurts forward and little halts, as Alan Breck began to sing to her his ditty before she took to the heather to deliver the message that was going to save Alan’s life. He sang:
This is the song of the sword of Alan:
    The smith made it,
    The fire set it;
    Now it shines in the hand of Alan Breck.
    Then Alan Breck clapped her shoulder and said, “Sandy, you are a brave lass and want nothing in courage that any King’s man might possess.”
    “Don’t walk so fast,” mumbled Mary.
    “You aren’t walking with your head up,” said Sandy. “Keep it up, up.”
    Then suddenly Sandy wanted to be kind to Mary Macgregor, and thought of the possibilities of feeling nice from being nice to Mary instead of blaming her. Miss Brodie’s voice from behind was saying to Rose Stanley, “You are all heroines in the making. Britain must be a fit country for heroines to live in. The League of Nations …” The sound of Miss Brodie’s presence, just when it was on the tip of Sandy’s tongue to be nice to Mary Macgregor, arrested the urge. Sandy looked back at her companions, and understood them as a body with Miss Brodie for the head. She perceived herself, the absent Jenny, the ever-blamed Mary, Rose, Eunice and Monica, all in a frightening little moment, in unified compliance to the destiny of Miss Brodie, as if God had willed them to birth for that purpose.
    She was even more frightened then, by her temptation to be nice to Mary Macgregor, since by this action she would separate herself, and be lonely, and blameable in a more dreadful way than Mary who, although officially the faulty one, was at least inside Miss Brodie’s category of heroines in the making. So, for good fellowship’s sake, Sandy said to Mary, “I wouldn’t be walking with you if Jenny was here.” And Mary said, “I know.” Then Sandy started to hate herself again and to nag on and on at Mary, with the feeling that if you did a thing a lot of times, you made it into a right thing. Mary started to cry, but quietly, so that Miss Brodie could not see. Sandy was unable to cope and decided to stride on and be a married lady having an argument with her husband:
    “Well, Colin, it’s rather hard on a woman when the lights have fused and there isn’t a man in the house.”
    “Dearest Sandy, how was I to know …”
    As they came to the end of the Meadows a group of Girl Guides came by. Miss Brodie’s brood, all but Mary, walked past with eyes ahead. Mary stared at the dark blue big girls with their regimented vigorous look and broader accents of speech than the Brodie girls used when in Miss Brodie’s presence. They passed, and Sandy said to Mary, “It’s rude to stare.” And Mary said, “I wasn’t staring.” Meanwhile Miss Brodie was being questioned by the girls behind on the question of the Brownies and the Girl Guides, for quite a lot of the other girls in the Junior School were Brownies.
    “For those who like that sort of thing,” said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, “that is the sort of thing they like.”
    So Brownies and Guides were ruled out. Sandy recalled Miss Brodie’s admiration for Mussolini’s marching troops, and the picture she had brought back from Italy showing the triumphant march of the black uniforms in Rome.
    “These are the fascisti,” said Miss Brodie,