fall, "Oh, yes, Mr. Lloyd wants to paint Rose in red velvet." And Sandy added, "Mrs. Lloyd has a bit of red velvet to put around her, they were trying it round her." "Are you to return?" said Miss Brodie. "Yes, all of us," Sandy said. "Mr. Lloyd thinks we're a jolly nice set." "Have you not thought it remarkable," said Miss Brodie, "that it is you six girls that Mr. Lloyd has chosen to invite to his studio?" "Well, we're a set," said Jenny. "Has he invited any other girls from the school?" — but Miss Brodie knew the answer. "Oh, no, only us." "It is because you are mine," said Miss Brodie. "I mean of my stamp and cut, and I am in my prime." Sandy and Jenny had not given much thought to the fact of the art master's inviting them as a group. Indeed, there was something special in his acceptance of the Brodie set. There was a mystery here to be worked out, and it was clear that when he thought of them he thought of Miss Brodie. "He always asks about you," Sandy said to Miss Brodie, "as soon as he sees us." "Yes, Rose did tell me that," said Miss Brodie. Suddenly, like migrating birds, Sandy and Jenny were of one mind for a run and without warning they ran along the pebbly beach into the air which was full of sunset, returning to Miss Brodie to hear of her forthcoming summer holiday when she was going to leave the fattened-up Mr. Lowther, she was afraid, to fend for himself with the aid of the Misses Kerr, and was going abroad, not to Italy this year but to Germany, where Hitler was become Chancellor, a prophet-figure like Thomas Carlyle, and more reliable than Mussolini; the German brownshirts, she said, were exactly the same as the Italian black, only more reliable. Jenny and Sandy were going to a farm for the summer holidays, where in fact the name of Miss Brodie would not very much be on their lips or in their minds after the first two weeks, and instead they would make hay and follow the sheep about. It was always difficult to realise during term times that the world of Miss Brodie might be half forgotten, as were the worlds of the school houses, Holyrood, Melrose, Argyll and Biggar. "I wonder if Mr. Lowther would care for sweetbreads done with rice," Miss Brodie said.
5
"Why, it's like Miss Brodie!" said Sandy. "It's terribly like Miss Brodie." Then, perceiving that what she had said had accumulated a meaning between its passing her lips and reaching the ears of Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, she said, "Though of course it's Rose, it's more like Rose, it's terribly like Rose." Teddy Lloyd shifted the new portrait so that it stood in a different light. It still looked like Miss Brodie. Deirdre Lloyd said, "I haven't met Miss Brodie I don't think. Is she fair?" "No," said Teddy Lloyd in his hoarse way, "she's dark." Sandy saw that the head on the portrait was fair, it was Rose's portrait all right. Rose was seated in profile by a window in her gym dress, her hands palm-downwards, one on each knee. Where was the resemblance to Miss Brodie? It was the profile perhaps; it was the forehead, perhaps; it was the type of stare from Rose's blue eyes, perhaps, which was like the dominating stare from Miss Brodie's brown. The portrait was very like Miss Brodie. "It's Rose, all right," Sandy said, and Deirdre Lloyd looked at her. "Do you like it?" said Teddy Lloyd. "Yes, it's lovely." "Well, that's all that matters." Sandy continued looking at it through her very small eyes, and while she was doing so Teddy Lloyd drew the piece of sheeting over the portrait with a casual flip of his only arm. Deirdre Lloyd had been the first woman to dress up as a peasant whom Sandy had ever met, and peasant women were to be fashionable for the next thirty years or more. She wore a fairly long full-gathered dark skirt, a bright green blouse with the sleeves rolled up, a necklace of large painted wooden beads and gipsy-looking earrings. Round her waist was a bright red wide belt. She wore dark brown stockings and sandals of dark green suede. In this, and various other costumes of similar kind, Deirdre was depicted on canvas in different parts of the studio.