The Meeting
Now that the Manager had gone, I was not particularly alarmed. What better than to be
imprisoned¹ in a room full of these splendid ladies? If I ever got talking to them, I might even suggest
that they come and do a bit of cruelty-to-children preventing at my school. We could certainly use
them there.
In they came, talking their heads off. They began milling round and choosing their seats, and
there was a whole lot of stuff like, "Come and sit next to me, Millie dear," and "Oh, hel-lo Beatrice! I
haven't seen you since the last meeting! What an adorable dress you have on!"
I decided² to stay where I was and let them get on with their meeting while I got on with my
mouse-training, but I watched them for a while longer through the crack in the screen, waiting for
them to settle down. How many were there? I guessed about two hundred. The back rows filled up
first. They all seemed to want to sit as far back from the platform as possible.
There was a lady wearing a tiny green hat in the middle of the back row who kept scratching
the nape of her neck. She couldn't leave it alone. It fascinated³ me the way her fingers kept scratching
away at the hair on the back of her neck. Had she known somebody was watching her from behind,
I'm sure she would have been embarrassed. I wondered if she had dandruff. All of a sudden, I noticed
that the lady next to her was doing the same thing!
And the next one!
And the next!
The whole lot of them were doing it. They were all scratching away like mad at the hair on
the backs of their necks!
Did they have fleas⁴ in their hair?
More likely it was nits.
A boy at school called Ashton had had nits in his hair last term and the matron had made him
dip his whole head in turpentine. It killed the nits all right, but it nearly killed Ashton as well. Half
the skin came away from his scalp.
I began to be fascinated by these hair-scratching ladies. It is always funny when you catch
someone doing something coarse and she thinks no one is looking. Nose-picking, for example, or
scratching her bottom. Hair-scratching is very nearly as unattractive, especially if it goes on and on.
I decided it had to be nits.
Then the most astonishing thing happened. I saw one lady pushing her fingers up

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