I am not sure why she was so surprised we had been smacked this was not exactly a school that was shy of using cp, however our class teacher, while strict rarely used cp, Possibly the dinner lady was aware of that and just presumed she would not use cp on us.
To be fair the high jinx in the playground had been displayed in the classroom that week. We had already been split up from each other in class due to `messing about` I should imagine being reported for misbehavior at dinner time was the final straw.