'Do you mind my
coming in?'
Her grey, almost sardonic eyes rested all the while on Ursula, as if
summing her up.
'Oh no,' said Ursula.
'Are you SURE?' repeated Hermione, with complete sang froid, and an
odd, half-bullying effrontery.
'Oh no, I like it awfully,' laughed Ursula, a little bit excited and
bewildered, because Hermione seemed to be compelling her, coming very
close to her, as if intimate with her; and yet, how could she be
intimate?
This was the answer Hermione wanted. She turned satisfied to Birkin.
'What are you doing?' she sang, in her casual, inquisitive fashion.
'Catkins,' he replied.
'Really!' she said. 'And what do you learn about them?' She spoke all
the while in a mocking, half teasing fashion, as if making game of the
whole business. She picked up a twig of the catkin, piqued by Birkin's
attention to it.
She was a strange figure in the class-room, wearing a large, old cloak
of greenish cloth, on which was a raised pattern of dull gold. The high
collar, and the inside of the cloak, was lined with dark fur.
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