The result of this policy was a rapid turnover in the young and intelligent teachers, and a small permanent staff of compliant sheep. That St. Agatha's had any scholastic standing was due to the fact that Miss Wakefield had taken honors at Girton, and the school's social standing was due to her being the cousin of a Peer of the Realm. The girls were fed almost enough, the school uniform was expensive, and nobody had much free time. French was well taught--by Miss Wakefield herself--and so was Latin, but games were also stressed. The school was run on what Miss Wakefield called the Honor System, which had the effect of dividing the pupils into tale-bearers and secret rebels. On a raw November afternoon, Miss Wakefield sent a prefect for Sarah Stone, who was one of the new girls. "Tell her to come straight to my office. She can have her shower later," she said, and Sarah arrived in the jersey and serge skirt she had been wearing on the hockey field. Her bare knees were blue and her nose was running. She stood waiting while the headmistress looked with prominent eyes at some papers on her desk. Sarah could see that they were examination papers and one of them was in her own handwriting. Without looking up, Miss Wakefield said, "I hear that your mother is in trouble with the police." "But she--" "Do not interrupt. I asked you no question and no answer is called for. It is a fact, which I have just read in the _Morning Post_, that your mother is in trouble with the police. Again--is that not true?" "No." The headmistress looked up in amazement "Do you mean to stand there and tell me the newspaper is _lying_? Do you tell me to my face that your mother is not involved with the ... the authorities?" Miss Wakefield also taught English Composition and woe betide the girl who used the same word twice in the same context. "We are blessed with the richest of all languages," she would say, "so let us explore it--let us make use of it--for to do otherwise would be tautology." She never made clear what tautology meant, but the girls got her drift. "I don't know whether the newspapers are lying or merely mistaken, Miss Wakefield," Sarah said, "although my mother says that it's hard to tell the difference with most journalists. At any rate, she is not in trouble with the police. They are the ones that are in trouble." The headmistress stared hard at Sarah; she was rather good at this with small girls of thirteen. (You and I might find it difficult to stare down a child, and impossible in the case of a kitten, but Miss Wakefield was, after all is said, the cousin of a Peer of the Realm.) "I believe I can understand that," she said. "In fact, I pity the arresting officer. Here is a woman who breaks shop windows for the sake of attracting attention to her political _clique_, and he is no doubt subjected to scratching and biting. Votes for women, indeed! Does breaking shop windows prove that people like her should have the ... the franchise?"