The examination list

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

The headmaster had pinned the list of examination candidates to the schoolroom door. Mary read it twice before she looked up at him. Her name was not there. The boys clustered around the notice, speaking as if the matter had already been settled.

“I was told my work would be considered,” she said.

The headmaster turned a page in his register. “The examination is intended for those who have completed the upper exercises.”

Mary set her exercise book on the desk. Its pages were crowded with corrections in the headmaster’s own hand. “Would you show me which exercise is unfinished?”

He did not take the book. “There is no need to make a scene.”

“I am asking about the work, sir.” Her voice had not risen. She kept one finger on the page where his red ink had written, ‘Excellent’. “If it is not enough, I should like to know what is missing.”

A boy near the door gave a short laugh. The headmaster glanced at him, then at the book. “You have done the exercises,” he said. “But the examination room is not a place for a pupil who has not been entered.”

Mary closed the book carefully. “Then please tell me what would have to change before I could be entered next time.”

For a moment, the headmaster studied the list rather than her. Then he took it down. He crossed out a name near the bottom and wrote Mary’s beside it. “You will sit the paper,” he said, “and we shall discuss the result afterwards.”

The boy by the door stopped laughing. Mary picked up her book. She did not smile, but as she passed the notice she saw that the crossed-out name belonged to a boy whose work had also been marked ‘Excellent’.