pressing patterns

This was the first time the girls had heard of Hugh’s artistic leanings. Sandy puzzled over this and took councel with Jenny, and it came to them both that Miss Brodie was making her new love story fit the old. Thereafter the two girls listened with double ears, and the rest of the class with single.

Sandy was fascinated by this method of making patterns with facts, and was divided between her admiration for the technique and the pressing need to prove Miss Brodie guilty of misconduct.

Muriel Spark, exert from ‘The Prime of Miss Brodie’.