Fiercely academic and successful, these schools, arguably, had resisted the 'egalitarian' impulse to co-educate and were providing a space where girls could aspire to be doctors, mathematicians and politicians.

Well, that is only a half-truth, as Mr. Steele also downpicked, that is, trailed.

The capons were leaden representations of cocks and hens pitched at by leaden dumps.

A very pretence and purpose of unkindness.