or right, she was perfectly reckless.
If everybody was right in rejecting Miss Quincey, there was rapture in
being wildly and wilfully in the wrong. She had flung up the game.

Miss Cursiter saw it. "I was right," said she. "You are under an
influence, and a dangerous one."

"Perhaps--but, influence for influence" (here Rhoda returned Miss
Cursiter's gaze intrepidly), "I'm not far wrong. I honestly think that if
we persist in turning out these intellectual monstrosities we shall hand
over worse incompetents than Miss Quincey to the next generation."

Rhoda was intrepid; all the same she reddened as she realized what a
mouthpiece she had become for Bastian Cautley's theories and temper.

"My dear Rhoda, you're an intellectual monstrosity yourself."

"I know. And in another twenty years' time they'll want to get rid of
_me_."

"Of me too," thought the Head. Miss Cursiter felt curiously old and worn.
She had invoked Rhoda's youth and it had risen up against her. Influence
for influence, her power was dead.

Rhoda had talked at length in the hope of postponing judgment in Miss
Quincey's case; now she was anxious to get back to Miss Quincey, to
escape judgment in her own.

"And how about Miss Quincey?" she asked.

Miss Cursiter had nothing to say about Miss Quincey. She had done with
that section of her subject. She understood that Rhoda had said in
effect, "If Miss Quincey goes, I go too." Nevertheless her mind was made
up; in tissue paper, all ready for Miss Quincey.

Unfortunately tissue paper is more or less transparent, and Miss Quincey
had no difficulty in perceiving the grounds of her dismissal when
presented to her in this neat way. Not even when Miss Cursiter said to
her, at the close of the interview they had early the next morning,
"For your own sake, dear Miss Quincey, I feel we must forego your
valuable--most valuable services."

Miss Cursiter hesitated, warned by something in the aspect of the tiny
woman who had been a thorn in her side so long. Somehow, for this
occasion, the most incompetent, most insignificant member of her staff
had contrived to clothe herself with a certain nobility. She was
undeniably the more dignified of the two.

The Head, usually so eloquent at great moments, found actual difficulty
in getting to the end of her next sentence.

"What I was thinking of--really again entirely for your own sake--was
whether it would not be better for you to take a little longer holiday. I