in that of the London squares, but in this case it was the inhabitants
who gave character to the locality. The five-bedded room off the front
landing was occupied by the stiffest and best behaved of the first
division, and might be ranked with Grosvenor Square or Lancaster Gate.
There were rooms on the second floor where girls of the second and third
division herded in inelegant obscurity, the Bloomsbury and Camden Town
of the mansion. On this story, too, slept the rabble of girls under
twelve--creatures utterly despicable in the minds of girls in their
teens, and the rooms they inhabited ranked as low as St. Giles's.

Ida Palliser was fortunate enough to have a bed in the butterfly-room, so
called on account of a gaudy wall paper, whereon Camberwell Beauties
disported themselves among roses and lilies in a strictly conventional
style of art. The butterfly-room was the most fashionable and altogether
popular dormitory at the Manor. It was the May Fair--a district not
without a shade of Bohemianism, a certain fastness of tone. The wildest
girls in the school were to be found in the butterfly-room.

It was a pleasant enough room in itself, even apart from its association
with pleasant people. The bow window looked out upon the garden and
across the garden to the Thames, which at this point took a wide curve
between banks shaded by old pollard willows. The landscape was purely
pastoral. Beyond the level meadows came an undulating line of low hill
and woodland, with here and there a village spire dark against the blue.

Mauleverer Manor lay midway between Hampton and Chertsey, in a land of
meadows and gardens which the speculating builder had not yet invaded.

The butterfly-room was furnished a little better than the common run of
boarding-school bedchambers. Miss Pew had taken a good deal of the