The Maths Test

Miss Rogers was quite appalled by the boys' results and knew that they could better. The lesson after there test, they filed into her classroom and stood behind their desks, knowing that this was going to be most certainly a tough one to get through.

"Good morning, boys," said Miss Rogers in a surprisingly calm tone from her position at the very front of the classroom.

"Good morning, Miss Rogers," the class chanted back in subdued unison.

"Be seated!"

For a brief moment, chairs scraped, satchels opened and hands placed book, pens and mathematical sets before them on their desks. Soon after, each boy sat bolt upright, anxiously awaiting his teacher's next command.

Miss Rogers said nothing. She walked slowly towards her desk, picked up a pile of marked test papers and walked around the room tossing them onto desks willy nilly with a look of pure disgust written across her face. The last paper fluttered onto the floor and the boy quickly stooped to pick it up as though it were all his fault.

"Question one," snapped the teacher's voice. "How do we work out the area of a triangle?"

Miss Rogers looked around in silence with renewed disgust as she saw but one solitary hand dared raise itself into the air.

"Yes, Ballard!" she said, "I'd like you to tell me the first step that one must undertake."

Ballard spoke with a palpable tremble to his voice as the rest of the class looked straight forward towards Miss Rogers.

"Erm, you make a box, Miss?" he asked tentatively.

"Hmmm," replied Miss Rogers, rather unconvinced by the boy's mathematical terminology. She then surveyed the rest of the class and grinned sardonically when she saw that not one eye dared meet her gaze. She then walked to the blackboard, drew a rough triangle and a box around it.

"Dixon!" she suddenly called out as she turned back towards the class, "And what do you think we should do with Ballard's box?"

"I don't know, Miss," he replied honestly, "Put a stamp on it and send it first class to Timbuktu?"

A subdued wave of laughter broke out across the classroom, but instantly died away as soon as the boys noticed what Miss Rogers was doing. Dixon looked all around him, he gulped and felt a flush of panic sweep across his brow.

"I'm sorry, Miss," he said quietly as she turned from her cupboard door with a thin, slender cane in her hand. "I can assure you that it will nev . . . ."

"Quiet boy!" she said in a calm, matter of fact voice. "Put your hand out and hold it there."

Miss Rogers walked towards Dixon who, in turn, stood up from his chair and stretched his hand outwards towards his mistress. He turned his head to one side and winced his eyes shut as the mathematics teacher raised the cane and paused for a moment as she eyed the tender palm that awaited it below.

The cane sang as it sailed through the air. It was a neat, clinical shot that left a clear red line across the palm of the boy's hand. Dixon released a high pitched gasp as the cane landed and, instantly, lifted his smited hand to his mouth in a desperate attempt to quench the powerful stinging sensation that blighted his hand.

As Dixon sat down, he groaned silently and continued to nurse his hand; as he did so, he rocked backwards and forwards slightly and closed his eyes to endure the pain.

"Edwards!" said Miss Rogers still with her cane in her hand. "Maybe you'd like to enlighten us in regards to Ballard's box!"

Edwards blanched visibly and stammered something quite inaudible.

"Bishop? . . . Pickford? . . . Crawford? . . . Turner? . . ." Miss Rogers asked every boy in the class until, finally, she took the cane in both hands and flexed it into a perfect arc and began to speak again.

"You all have ten minutes to find out the correct answers from your books," she suddenly announced as she let the cane spring back again in her hand. "Then we shall start again and if, at the end of the lesson, I am not fully satisfied by your effort, then I am sure that poor Dixon here can testify to the unpleasantness that will follow!"

The class looked over towards poor Dixon who was now caressing his hand beneath his arm and still moaning inaudibly. The very sight of this made each and every boy suddenly reach for his text book, open it and feverishly flick its pages back and forth as Miss Rogers looked over them with a distant grin of professional satisfaction cast upon her lips.