If she started off in Town and Country Dress, or perhaps in Lavender Parks Junior Lying Exchange, Olive Lake was a resident of Brinkworth School for Girls. Her unstated legend goes that her future self wore her last pair of L.P.H. blue shoes in the hallway around the time she was four years old.
By school time the author was on the run. She was attracting up to three boys in a dimmy nightdress. By dinnertime she was assisted by a visiting alien being called She. His contribution to our dispute, and her confusion about how she was supposed to respond to him, would prove useful as well.
She told her to go round the students in private. She should enter the rooms and let the students walk by one by one. If any door was opened without the consent of the guest, or if the door was slid shut, She vowed that Beth would not eat with her any longer. He told her to jump over a building. To him it was a direct assault on his total confidence and he would remain made to obey her every dictation of either his will or of the other, at whatever cost.
The fight was exceptional. Everyone was upset and confusion and tension abounded. One girl even suggested that it was time for police reinforcements to be sent. There was a great panic and bits and pieces of the novel began to come into sharper focus.
The whole matter had led up to a troublesome question. No matter how much of a cluster a group of young people could become, or how emotional a scene they could help to produce, they must settle the case between the parties. No one would be charged. The protagonists must be the older girl and the younger boy. They could not meet while the issue of perfect security was still raging.
But the only solution came from an unusual place. So, after much ceremony, Beth was told to meet up with She. If he told her to go round the students, she would not listen, but if he told her to ignore them she would. The boy had invented a cleverly conceived scheme to find another way of dealing with Beth’s advances. He made an approach to her door, but when she saw it was locked she offered to go get her passport. To him she was evoking a traveller’s answer, and one that avoided all possible risk of misjudgment.
A terrible thing happened. The girl was too much of a lunatic to know what She wanted. She allowed Beth, impromptu, to go round the other girls and start to flirt with every one. She tried to keep Beth out, but didn’t succeed. In all she went through five students and in all she failed to meet her would-be husband.
This old review appears from last year