quite happy

"Why doesn't Brother Healy teach them like that?" he asked Sister Madeleine.

But she had no explanation. She seemed insistent that Brother Healy did teach them like that. It was very unsatisfactory.

Clio Kelly didn't want to go back to school. She was fed up with schoo. She knew enough now; she wanted to go to a stage school in London and learn to dance and sing, and be discovered by a kind old man who owned a theatre.

Anna her younger sister would be quite happy when lessons started. Anna was in disgrace at home. She claimed she had seen the ghost. She said she saw the woman crying. She couldn't exactly hear what the words were, but she thought it was 'Look in the reeds, look in the reeds'. Her father had been unexpectedly cross with her and accused her for looking for notice.

"But I did see her." Anna had wept.

"No, you did not see her. And you are not to go around saying you did. This is hysterical enough place already without you adding to it. It's dangerous and foolish to let simple people thing that an educated girl like you should give in to such foolishness."

Even her mother had been unsympathetic. And Clio had a horrible smirk of superiority, as if she was saying to her family "Now wasn't I right about how awful Anna is."

Kit McMahon was pleased to be going back to school.

She had made a promise that this year she would work very hard. It had been a promise made during the only good conversation she had with her mother for as long as she could remember.

It was the day she got her first period. Mother had been marvellous, and said all the right things, like wasn't it great she was a woman now, and that this was a fine time to be a woman in Ireland.

There was much freedom and so many choices. Kit expressed some doubt about this. Lough Glass wasn't a place that inspired you with a notion of wild and free, and she wondered how very unlimited were the options that lay ahead of her.