all,
four-square, built of white brick about the year 1780, had a row of
little pillars running along the roof at the top, and a Grecian portico.
It was odd that there should be such a house in Abchurch, but there it
was. It was erected by a Spitalfields silk manufacturer, whose family
belonged to those parts. He thought to live in it after his retirement,
but he came there to die. The studies of the pupils were superintended
by the Misses Ponsonby and sundry teachers, all female, except the
drawing-master and the music-master. The course embraced the usual
branches of a superior English education, French, Italian, deportment,
and the use of the globes, but, as the Misses Ponsonby truly stated in
their prospectus, their sole aim was not the inculcation of knowledge,
but such instruction as would enable the young ladies committed to their
charge to move with ease in the best society, and, above everything, the
impression of correct principles in morality and religion. In this
impression much assistance was given by the Reverend Theophilus Cardew,
the rector of the church in the village. The patronage was in the hands
of the Simeonite trustees, and had been bought by them in the first
fervour of the movement.

The thirty pupils occupied fifteen bedrooms, although each had a separate
bed, and to Catharine was allotted Miss Julia Arden, a young woman with a
pretty, pale face, and black hair worn in ringlets. Her head was not
firmly fixed on her shoulders, and was always in motion, as if she had
some difficulty in balancing it, the reason being, not any physical
defect, but a wandering imagination, which never permitted her to look at
any one thing steadily for an instant. Nine-tenths of what she said was
nonsense, but her very shallowness gave occasionally a certain value and
reality to her talk, for the simple reason that she was incapable of the
effort necessary to conceal what she thought for the moment. In her
studies she made not the slightest progress, for her memory was shocking.
She confounded all she was taught, and never could recollect whether the
verb was conjugated and the noun declined, or whether it was the other
way round, to use one of her favourite expressions, so that her
preceptors were compelled to fall back, more exclusively than with her
schoolfellows, on her moral conduct, which was outwardly respectable
enough, but by the occupant of the other bed might perhaps have been
reported on in term