There were murmurs as the newly-designated student doctors shuffled into the room. Their teacher was not yet there, so they either sat down or squabbled for seats.
None sat in the front row.
Someone threw a spare and dusty old tome out the window to shut up the troll busker. This was considered a wise move, as the troll couldn't see who the culprit was [1].
Eventually, they waited so long that many were just getting up to leave, when a good-looking girl with a scar under her eye and a head of fair hair rushed in.
"Here, you've got the wrong room," said one student. "This is the class for doctors. You want the class for nurses."
"Excuthe me, but I wath looking for the class for doctorth. This it, then?" the girl asked, dropping her things on the nearest desk.
Another student, who was not particularly bright but was a devil with a scalpel, gasped and said, "You can't be a doctor!"
"What? Why not?"
"Well," said a friend of the second student, whose intelligence was not much better, "you're a *girl*."
"Excuthe me?" Her voice was suddenly glacial.
Another student had tired of the debate and was just getting out the door.
"Excuthe me." Her voice had just dropped to -273 degrees celsius. "Where are you going?"
"I'm leaving, a'course. Teacher int here, is he? So class's canceled. Stands t' reason."
"I am here," said the girl, very flatly. "I just got here thith morning, okay? I got lotht, I got late. Clath isn't over, tho don't leave."
The students were suddenly a lot more alert. They practically fell over themselves to complain.
"Here, someone said we'd be taught by an Igor-" "-won't be taught by any squeamish, namby-pamby girl-" "-trying to palm us off with a country midwife?" "-should've become a wizard like mam wanted, if it's a girl teaching us-"
The girl took that moment to whistle extremely loudly. "Thit down!" she barked. "You all chothe to be doctors and by the Duchess you'll be doctorth!"
They sat down, more because their muscles had done so automatically than because their brains had told their knees to bend.
"Now, then. I'm Igorina. Mith Igorina, to you. And if any of you Morporkians have ever heard of Theargent-major Jack Jackrum, you should be shaking in your bootth right now. No? No one? Pity. Becauthe I therved under Theargent-major Jackrum, and he's one of the betht men anyone could learn under!"
One of the more widely-read students was suddenly awake. "Here, you can't mean that Jackrum fella in Borogravia, can you?"
"Who elthe could I mean?"
The less aware-of-current-events students were hurriedly whispered to, and soon the room buzzed. "-Monstrous Regiment-" "-woman soldier-" "-best listen to her, she's ever so fierce and you don't want any Igor mad at you-"
Igorina leaned against the teacher's desk and smiled. Jackrum had his little lads, Polly and Maladicta had theirs, and now, she would have hers [2].
[1] The troll, in truth, did not get even the slightest idea of retaliating, the fact being that the thrower's aim was so poor the tome missed the troll by several feet and hit Corporal C. W. St. J. Nobbs on the head. C.M.O.T. Dibbler then took advantage of Corporal Nobbs's disorientation to sell him several sausages-inna-bun.
[2]The main difference being that hers were would-be doctors while theirs were would-be soldiers[3].
[3]That and the bit less or bit more of flesh.