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when she read from James Hogg's poem "Bonnie Kilmeny,"
    Kilmeny was pure as pure could be and added, "Which is to say, she did not go to the glen in order to mix with men."
    "When I see Miss Mackay on Monday morning," said Miss Brodie, "I shall point out that by the terms of my employment my methods cannot be condemned unless they can be proved to be in any part improper or subversive, and so long as the girls are in the least equipped for the end-of-term examination. I trust you girls to work hard and try and scrape through, even if you learn up the stuff and forget it next day. As for impropriety, it could never be imputed to me except by some gross distortion on the part of a traitor. I do not think ever to be betrayed. Miss Mackay is younger than I am and higher salaried. That is by accident. The best qualifications available at the University in my time were inferior to those open to Miss Mackay. That is why she holds the senior position. But her reasoning power is deficient, and so I have no fears for Monday."
    "Miss Mackay has an awfully red face, with the veins all showing," said Rose.
    "I can't permit that type of remark to pass in my presence, Rose," said Miss Brodie, "for it would be disloyal."
    They had come to the end of Lauriston Place, past the fire station, where they were to get on a tram car to go to tea with Miss Brodie in her flat at Churchhill. A very long queue of men lined this part of the street. They were without collars, in shabby suits. They were talking and spitting and smoking little bits of cigarette held between middle finger and thumb.
    "We shall cross here," said Miss Brodie and herded the set across the road. Monica Douglas whispered, "They are the Idle."
    "In England they are called the Unemployed. They are waiting to get their dole from the labour bureau," said Miss Brodie. "You must all pray for the Unemployed, I will write you out the special prayer for them. You all know what the dole is?" Eunice Gardiner had not heard of it.
    "It is the weekly payment made by the State for the relief of the unemployed and their families. Sometimes they go and spend their dole on drink before they go home, and their children starve. They are our brothers. Sandy, stop staring at once. In Italy the Unemployment problem has been solved."
    Sandy felt that she was not staring across the road at the endless queue of brothers, but that it was pulling her eyes towards it. She felt once more very frightened. Some of the men looked over at the girls, but without seeing them. The girls had reached the tram stop. The men were talking and spitting a great deal. Some were laughing with hacking laughs merging into coughs and ending up with spits.
    As they waited for the tram car Miss Brodie said, "I had lodgings in this street when first I came to Edinburgh as a student. I must tell you a story about the landlady, who was very frugal. It was her habit to come to me every morning to ask what I would have for breakfast, and she spoke like this: 'Wud ye have a red herrin? â no ye wouldn't. Could ye eat a boilt egg?
    â no ye couldn't.' The result was, I never had but bread and butter to my breakfast all the time I was in those lodgings, and very little of that."
    The laughter of the girls met that of the men opposite, who had now begun to file slowly by fits and starts into the labour bureau. Sandy's fear returned as soon as she had stopped laughing. She saw the slow jerkily moving file tremble with life, she saw it all of a piece like one dragon's body which had no right to be in the city and yet would not go away and was unslayable. She thought of the starving children. This was a relief to her fear. She wanted to cry as she always did when she saw a street singer or a beggar. She wanted Jenny to be there, because Jenny cried easily about poor children. But the snaky creature opposite started to shiver in the cold and made Sandy tremble again. She turned and said to Mary Macgregor who had brushed against her sleeve,