Free The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark Page B

said.
        "We're awfully proud of Joanna," said Greggie.
        "A fine reader."
        "No, she recites from memory. But her pupils read, of course. It's elocution."
        Selina gracefully knocked some garden mud off her wedge shoes on the stone step, and the party moved inside.
        The girls went to get ready. The men disappeared into the dark little downstairs cloak-room.
        "That is a fine poem," said Felix, for Joanna's voices were here, too, and the lesson had moved to _Kubla Khan__.
        Nicholas almost said, "She is orgiastical in her feeling for poetry. I can hear it in her voice," but refrained in case the Colonel should say "Really?" and he should go on to say, "Poetry takes the place of sex for her, I think."
        "Really? She looked sexually fine to me."
        Which conversation did not take place, and Nicholas kept it for his notebooks.
        They waited in the hall till the girls came down. Nicholas read the notice-board, advertising secondhand clothes for sale, or in exchange for clothing coupons. Felix stood back, a refrainer from such intrusions on the girls' private business, but tolerant of the other man's curiosity. He said, "Here they come."
        The number and variety of muted noises-off were considerable. Laughter went on behind the folded doors of the first-floor dormitory. Someone was shovelling coal in the cellar, having left open the green baize door which led to those quarters. The telephone desk within the office rang distantly shrill with boy-friends, and various corresponding buzzes on the landings summoned the girls to talk. The sun broke through as the forecast had promised.
     
            _Weave a circle round him thrice,__
            _And close your eyes with holy dread,__
            _For he on honey-dew hath fed,__
            _And drunk the milk of Paradise.__
     
    6
     
    "Dear Dylan Thomas," wrote Jane.
        Downstairs, Nancy Riddle, who had finished her elocution lesson, was attempting to discuss with Joanna Childe the common eventualities arising from being a clergyman's daughter.
        "My father's always in a filthy temper on Sundays. Is yours?"
        "No, he's rather too occupied."
        "Father goes on about the Prayer Book. I must say, I agree with him there. It's out of date."
        "Oh, I think the Prayer Book's wonderful," said Joanna. She had the Book of Common Prayer practically by heart, including the Psalms—especially the Psalms—which her father repeated daily at Matins and Evensong in the frequently empty church. In former years at the rectory Joanna had attended these services every day, and had made the responses from her pew, as it might be on "Day 13," when her father would stand in his lofty meekness, robed in white over black, to read:
     
            _Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered:__
     
        whereupon without waiting for pause Joanna would respond:
     
            _let them also that hate him flee before him__.
     
        The father continued:
     
            _Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shall thou drive__
              _them away:__
     
        And Joanna came in swiftly:
     
        _and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the__
            _ungodly perish at the presence of God.__
     
        And so on had circled the Psalms, from Day 1 to Day 31 of the months, morning and evening, in peace and war; and often the first curate, and then the second curate, took over the office, uttering as it seemed to the empty pews, but by faith to the congregations of the angels, the Englishly rendered intentions of the sweet singer of Israel.
        Joanna lit the gas-ring in her room in the May of Teck Club and put on the kettle. She said to Nancy Riddle:
        "The Prayer Book is wonderful. There was a new version got up in 1928, but Parliament put it out. Just as well, as it happened."
        "What's the Prayer Book got to