"Would you like my mirror?" she asked, and rummaged in her bag.

Lunch at the Institute this day was cold, to allow Mrs Blain time to prepare the buffet for their dance. The students waited at long linen covered trestles for Miss Baker and Miss Edge. The noise of their talking was a twitter of a thousand starlings.

The hall in which they took their meals was that used whenever there was an entertainment. The tables could be removed, were lightly constructed, as also High Table, on a dais at which the staff were served, and which could be taken to pieces although built to a massive, shining, mahogany front. Behind it, neatly stacked in a great pile or pyre on the floor, was a mass of cut azalea and rhododendron the seniors had gathered to decorate the room later, but in time for their gramophone when this was set to endlessly repeat one valse. When the staff filed in, Edge and Baker bringing up the rear, that clatter of conversation stilled as, with a rustle of a thousand birds rising from willows about a warm lagoon, the girls stood in silence to mark the entrance. Then, after Miss Edge had been last to sit down, the three hundred budding State Servants, with another outburst of talk as of starlings moving between clumps of reeds to roost, in their turn left to collect plates of cold meat and vegetables ready laid out in the kitchen.

"Ah Marchbanks," Miss Edge called out above the bustle, "I see they have not neglected our tamasha." She was looking at the mass of flowers.

"I'd thought pine branches with salt," that woman answered with a blush. "So cool, in this hot weather, for the Dance. A soupcon of snow," she elaborated.

"Indeed," Edge said, unenthusiastic, while conversation, for the moment, became general around High Table.

"In their white dresses," Marchbanks explained, painting the picture.

"I hesitate to think what our Supervisor would say," Edge objected, referring to a Government Inspector whose visits, in order to check up, were exhaustive and unannounced.

"Yes, there is that of course," Marchbanks agreed.

"What a time they are being, Baker, with our luncheon," said Miss Edge. And her confidence was now such that she continued, having for the moment forgotten, "What can have happened to Mary and her girls?"

It was Mary whose privilege it had been to serve them, each day almost. Right from the very first she had shewn such diligence.

Miss Baker winced. Once more she closed her eyes. There was a noticeable pause.

Winstanley offered up a topic to bridge the awkwardness.

"Ma'am," she said. "Have you ever thought of Chinese pheasants for our grounds?"

"Chinese?" Miss Edge enquired.

"The plumage," Winstanley explained. "A perfect red and gold. They aren't any trouble either, they live off the land."

"I seem to remember Mr Birt telling us there was no such thing," Edge expatiated, with a glance of malice at this man.

"Ah," he said, bowed in her direction, and assumed a close imitation of Mr Rock's party manner which they could all recognise. "We admit of no domestic animal as self sufficient under the State. But it would certainly add a touch of Babylonian splendour to the walks."

"It might startle his goose," Edge objected with a knowing look. All laughed at this allusion, Sebastian Birt excessively.

"They need no attention, ma'am, for sure," Winstanley insisted. "They roost in the nearest tree, and feed off acorns."

"Like cats and pigs then," Miss Edge said, with a smirk benign.

"Where I was brought up there used to be a black and white farm," Baker announced. "A half timbered place, piebald horses, black and white poultry and so on."

"I often wish I had been reared in the country," Edge said, throwing a bright smile at her colleague to mark this lady's return into the fold of conversation. "Sometimes I wonder if our girls appreciate how fortunate they are to find themselves in magnificent Parks and Woodlands."

"Oh they do that, I'm sure, ma'am," came from Marchbanks.

"And someone like Mr Rock, again," Edge pursued, her eye on Sebastian Birt. "How truly privileged."

There was another pause.

"The amenities of urban life in sylvan surroundings," the young man said at last, still with an exact imitation of the sage.

"More, I think," Miss Edge said. "Indeed I fancy that taking Youth, as he has it round him now, and in this beautiful great Place, one of the State's ornaments, a veritable crown of Jewels, a man could be expected to live out his life at rest with himself, and the world."

"But it must depend on one's physical condition. There can be no comfort in age as such," Winstanley, who loved an argument, objected.

Miss Edge looked gravely at her. "In that case," she said, as though to refer to incurable illness, "there is another alternative. The State looks after its own. There are Homes of Repose for those who have deserved well of their Country and who, with advancing years, find the burden of old age detracts from the advantages of a life of quietude they have been permitted to lead at large." Sebastian squirmed. She saw this, then turned to Baker, who looked woodenly at her in warning.

"There are great mercies," Miss Marchbanks said.

"And great responsibilities, Marchbanks," Edge corrected, upon which she swept over the hall of students with an imperious slow swing of her eyes. She did not, at once, go on with what she had been about to say, or here and there, below, she could perceive a mood she particularly detested, and which today she could not have after all that had occurred, girls whispering. She was unable, of course, to hear this. But it was the heavy heads leant sideways into one another's hair, the look of couples as though withdrawn upon each other, in one word, the air of complicity, which startled and disgusted Edge.

"A community at peace within itself," she went on, but her attention was no longer directed onto those immediately around, "can well be a corrective," and then she saw how many of these whisperers seemed to watch someone at High Table, "can canalise," she said, in wonder could it be Sebastian Birt? "will influence all those who come under the sway," she continued haltingly but no they seemed intent on someone or something beyond, "must bring out the best," she said, then realised it could only be the mass of flowers, "can but. ." she continued, and there she stopped. Her colleagues, who turned in surprise, saw Miss Edge go pale. It was one of these deadly rumours had taken hold of the students, the Principal knew, was spreading through their ranks in poison. She pulled herself together. "Can but turn all those who come under its influence upwards and onwards to the ideals, to the practical politics, that is, the High Purposes of the State," she ended in a forced rush.

She blew her nose, then, to hide her face a moment. What idea could it be had taken hold, she asked herself?

"The greatest good of the greatest number," Sebastian echoed, in a peculiarly servile manner.

"I think your suggestion about these Chinese pheasants excellent," Baker said to Winstanley, with a nervous eye on Edge, who, at that precise instant, rose up from her place. She went slowly over towards the mass of flowers. The staff's anxious conversation covered the guv'nor's halting step. But they began to keep their girls in view also, and could see those who whispered fall silent the better to watch Miss Edge. Then, when this lady reached the pyre of azalea and rhododendron, which towered well above her head, and which must at once have assailed her with its burden of hot scent, one child even rose to her feet she was so curious about Miss Edge, only to be brought back by a neighbour tugging on her skirts at which she subsided, rosy cheeks covered by blushes, and in a fit of giggling which she managed to choke off too easily, too soon.