"The other mistresses aren't so queer as the gym teacher but look
more like other people except that they wear too much jewelry.
Everybody wears a great deal and you know what we think at home of
ladies who appear on the street with rings and chains and lockets.
Edith and her sister Estelle don't dress so, but Mother says they
are quite exceptional.

"As for lessons, we have to study. They expect a lot of grammar
and parsing, and dates in history and solid facts in geography and
all that. Mother approves; she thinks the English system much less
faddy than at home. We have Bible instruction in regular lessons.
I'll admit that these English girls know more than I do about
things in books, but they haven't any idea what's going on in the
present world. They didn't know much about the Panama canal and
the tolls. Win howled when I said I explained it to them and vowed
he'd give a dollar to have heard me. And several didn't know who
was president of the United States. Imagine that, when we're the
most important republic in the world! I knew their old king.

"We begin school at half-past eight and have prayers and a Bible
exercise. Different classes follow until eleven when a gong rings
and everybody rushes into the garden, a lovely place with box-
edged beds and a sun dial and gravel walks. There are myrtles and
geraniums, great big bushes of them, and japonicas and heavenly
wall-flowers and _trees_ of lemon verbena and fuchsias up to the
eaves. This is solid truth, and in November, too.

"In the garden we find a table with jugs of milk,--notice my
English, please--and biscuit, that is, crackers, and we gobble and