Reading. Form 8. Good morning, miss Dove.

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GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE

(after Frances Gray Patton)

Miss Dove [mis dʌv] was a strict teacher. If a pupil wanted to leave the classroom to get a drink of water, Miss Dove just looked at him and said nothing. They were afraid of that look and they called her ‘ the terrible Miss Dove’, though she never shouted at them or scolded them.

On that day, forty children were sitting in her class in the Geography lesson. They heard the bell, but they did not move, they did not talk, they all waited in silence and looked at Miss Dove. Only after she had told them to close their books and go, they left the classroom quietly without shouting or running. A boy who had talked during the lesson was left in the room and had to write twenty times “ I must not talk during the lessons.” The next lesson began. The pupils came into the classroom and took their places. Miss Dove gave them written work to do, because it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays they always had some written work.

One of the boys pushed the girl who was sitting next to him. Miss Dove looked at him, and he stopped moving, though she did not scold him. Miss Dove looked at the boy but she did not see him. Instead of him she saw his elder brother, Thomas Baker [ˈtɔməs ˈbeɪ.kər], who had sat in that place some six or seven years before. The war brought the children she had taught to different parts of the world. One was in Germany, another — in the jungle of New Guinea [nju: ˈɡɪn.i], a third one — somewhere in Africa. She did not know where all of them were. Though all of them had finished school many years before, she now saw them as they had been at seven, at ten or at twelve.

The pupil she thought about most often was Thomas Baker. The German planes had bombed his ship, and for many days he had lain on a raft without anything to eat and very little to drink. When they found him, he was almost dying. The newspapers wrote much about him in those days. Randy [ˈræn.di] Baker put his hand up.

“ Yes, Baker? ” Miss Dove asked.

“ I got a letter from Tom yesterday,” the boy explained. “ May I read it to the class? ”

“ Yes, certainly.”

“ But it’s a long one.”

“ I’m sure it will be useful for everyone to hear the letter of such a brave man,” explained the

teacher.

Randy looked around and began to read. Tom told his younger brother what he had seen from the plane in which he was brought back to England. He wrote that the land below looked like the map they had used in the Geography lessons at school. Then he wrote how he had suffered on the raft with almost no water to drink. “ Do you know who I was thinking about then? It wasn’t a boy or a girl,” he explained. “ I was thinking about Miss Dove, and out there in the open ocean I played a game. No, I am not joking. And it helped me to stay alive. I imagined that I was back again in the Geography class; I remembered the look Miss Dove gave us when we wanted to leave the classroom for a drink of water.

So I imagined that I was in her lesson and kept thinking all the time, “ The bell will go in a few minutes. You can wait a little longer. You must wait for the bell.” And it made everything easier ,it was almost as difficult there in the ocean as it had been at school. Tell that to the boys, will you? ”

Randy stopped suddenly.

“ Is that all? ” Miss Dove asked.

“ No,” said Randy. His face became very red. “ It says here, “ Please thank Miss Dove and give her a kiss for me.”

Miss Dove went up to the boy.

“ Well, Randy,” she said. “ I’m waiting.” In the silence that followed little Randy kissed “ the terrible Miss Dove” . Nobody in the class laughed or even joked about it; everybody was silent except one girl who suddenly spoke.

“ It’s like a medal,” she said. “ It’s just like a medal he has given to Miss Dove.”