Mrs. Knight's school, to which Katy and Clover and Cecy went, stood
quite at the other end of the town from Dr. Carr's. It was a low,
one-story building and had a yard behind it, in which the girls played
at recess. Unfortunately, next door to it was Miss Miller's school,
equally large and popular, and with a yard behind it also. Only a high
board fence separated the two playgrounds.

Mrs. Knight was a stout, gentle woman, who moved slowly, and had a face
which made you think of an amiable and well-disposed cow. Miss Miller,
on the contrary, had black eyes, with black corkscrew curls waving about
them, and was generally brisk and snappy. A constant feud raged between
the two schools as to the respective merits of the teachers and the
instruction. The Knight girls for some unknown reason, considered
themselves genteel and the Miller girls vulgar, and took no pains to
conceal this opinion; while the Miller girls, on the other hand,
retaliated by being as aggravating as they knew how. They spent their
recesses and intermissions mostly in making faces through the knot-holes
in the fence, and over the top of it when they could get there, which
wasn't an easy thing to do, as the fence was pretty high. The Knight
girls could make faces too, for all their gentility. Their yard had one
great advantage over the other: it possessed a wood-shed, with a
climbable roof, which commanded Miss Miller's premises, and upon this
the girls used to sit in rows, turning up their noses at the next yard,
and irritating the foe by jeering remarks. "Knights" and "Millerites,"
the two schools called each other; and the feud raged so high, that
sometimes it was hardly safe for a Knight to meet a Millerite in the
street; all of which, as may be imagined, was exceedingly improving both
to the manners and morals of the young ladies concerned.