all?

The same impression, the sense of a half-impatient, half-exasperated
tuition came to her from the lectures of Herr Winter and Herr Schraub.

Herr Winter, a thin tall withered-looking man with shabby hair and bony
hands whose veins stood up in knots, drummed on the table as he
taught botany and geography. The girls sat round bookless and politely
attentive and seemed, the Germans at least, to remember all the facts
for which he appealed during the last few minutes of his hour. Miriam
could never recall anything but his weary withered face.

Herr Schraub, the teacher of history, was, she felt, almost openly
contemptuous of his class. He would begin lecturing, almost before he
was inside the door. He taught from a book, sitting with downcast eyes,
his round red mass of face--expressionless save for the bristling spikes
of his tiny straw-coloured moustache and the rapid movements of his
tight rounded little lips--persistently averted from his pupils. For the
last few minutes of his time he would, ironically, his eyes fixed ahead
of him at a point on the table, snap questions--indicating his aim with
a tapping finger, going round the table like a dealer at cards. Surely
the girls must detest him.... The Germans made no modification of their
polite attentiveness. Amongst the English only Gertrude and the Martins
found any answers for him. Miriam, proud of sixth-form history essays
and the full marks she had generally claimed for them, had no memory for
facts and dates; but she made up her mind that were she ever so prepared
with a correct reply, nothing should drag from her any response to these
military tappings. Fraulein presided over these lectures from the corner
of the sofa out of range of the eye of the teacher and horrified Miriam
by voicelessly prompting the girls whenever she could. There was no kind
of preparation for these lessons.

2

Miriam mused over the difference between the bearing of these men and
that of the masters she remembered and tried to find words. What was it?
Had her masters been more--respectful than these Germans were? She felt
they had. But it was not only that. She recalled the men she remembered
teaching week by week through all the years she had known them... the
little bolster-like literature master, an albino, a friend of Browning,
reading, reading to them as if it were worth while, as if they were
equals... interested friends--that had never struck her at the time....
But