ith the initials of bygone scholars, and all the forms were
slippery with the fidgetings of innumerable little girls. About the air
of the warm, murmurous schoolroom hung the traditions of a dead system
of education.

Jenny learned to darn and sew; to recite Cowper's "Winter Walk" after
Miss Wilberforce, who was never called "teacher," but always "ma'am"; to
deliver trite observations upon the nature of common animals, such as
"The dog is a sagacious beast," "The sheep is the friend of man," and to
acquire a slight acquaintance with uncommon animals such as the quagga,
the yak, and the ichneumon, because they won through their initials an
undeserved prominence in the alphabet. She learned that Roman Catholics
worshiped images and, incidentally, the toe of the Pope, and wondered
vaguely if the latter were a dancer. She was told homely tales about
Samuel and Elijah. She was given a glazed Bible which smelt of
oil-cloth, and advised to read it every morning and every evening
without any selection of suitable passages. She learned a hymn called
"Now the day is over," which always produced an emotion of exquisite
melancholy. She was awarded a diminutive plot of ground and given a
penny packet of nasturtium seeds to sow, but, being told by another
girl that they were good to eat, she ate them instead, and her garden
was a failure.

There were delightful half-holiday rambles over the countryside, when
she, still in her scarlet serge, and half a dozen girls and boys danced
along the lanes picking flowers and playing games with chanted refrains
like "Green Gravel" and "Queen of Barbary." She made friends with
farmers' lads, and learned to climb trees and call poultry and find
ducks' eggs. Hay-making time came on, when she was allowed to ride on
the great swinging loads right into the setting sun, it seemed. She used
to lie on her back, lulled by the sounds of eventide, and watch the
midges glinting on the air of a golden world.

She slept in a funny little flowery room next to her uncle and aunt, and
she used to lie awake in the slow summer twilights sniffing in the
delicious odor of pinks in full bloom below her window. Sometimes she
would lean out of the window and weave fancies round the bubbling stream
beyond the grass till the moon came up from behind a hop-garden and
threw tree-shadows all over the room. Below her sill she could pick
great crimson roses that looked like bunches of black velvet in the
moonlight, and in t