Recalled On A Sports Day At A Girls' School

Although, as a child, unfailingly one of the last two (the other being another little shrimp, Hortence) chosen, or rather reluctantly accepted by Team Captains for an Inter-Form Game once -- as if suddenly sprouting wings (small but tough) from ankle-bone or shoulder-blade -- she finished first in a hurdle-race:

having blindly, wildly charged out ahead, in a navy-blue tunic and striped School tie, notm for the honour of St. Ethelbert's -- all codes, cocoa, and that pervading stamina-inducing chill -- but, quite simply, in order to survive. When, at the tapeline, Miss Grimley, the Games Misstress (frankly, and understandably, taken aback) exclaimed "Good heavens! how on earth -- " she scarcely heard: only knowing that by some miracle of grace -- perhaps to be got in touch with again? -- she'd escaped!m Escaped from being erased in a thundering stampede of Everybody Else.