g so much wider,"
murmured Helen Cooper, with an eye of admiration on the woods.

"Don't suppose Evan shares your enthusiasm," laughed Marjorie Earnshaw.
"He's paid the same, whatever the length of the journey."

"Old Grumps gets half a crown for his job, so he needn't grumble," put
in Doris Deane.

"Oh, trust him! He'd look sour at a pound note."

"What makes him so cross?"

"Oh, he's old and lame, I suppose, and has a crotchety temper."

"Here we are at last!"

The boat was grating on the shore. Griffith was unfastening the movable
end, and in another moment the girls were springing out gingerly, one by
one, on to the decidedly muddy stepping-stones that formed a rough
causeway to the bank. A cart was waiting to convey the handbags (all
boxes had been sent as "advance luggage" two days before), so,
disencumbered of their numerous possessions, the girls started to walk
the steep uphill mile that led to The Woodlands.

Miss Bowes and Miss Teddington, the partners who owned the school, had
been exceptionally fortunate in their choice of a house. If, as runs the
modern theory, beautiful surroundings in our early youth are of the
utmost importance in training our perceptions and aiding the growth of
our higher selves, then surely nowhere in the British Isles could a more
suitable setting have been found for a home of education. The long
terrace commanded a view of the whole of the Craigwen Valley, an expanse
of about sixteen miles. The river, like a silver ribbon, wound through
woods and marshland till it widened into a broad tidal estuary as it
neared the sea. The mountains, which rose tier after tier from the level
green meadows, had their lower slopes thickly clothed with pines and
larches; but where they towered above the level of a thousand feet the
forest growth gave way to gorse and bracken, and their jagged summits,
bare of all vegetation save a few clumps of coarse grass, showed a
splintered, weather-worn outline against the sky. Penllwyd, Penglaslyn,
and Glyder Garmon, those lofty peaks like three strong Welsh giants,
seemed to guard the entrance to the enchanted valley, and to keep it a
place apart, a last fortress of nature, a sanctuary for birds and
flowers, a paradise of green shade and leaping waters, and a
breathing-space for body and soul.

The house, named "The Woodlands" by Miss Bowes in place of its older but
rather unpronounceable name of Llwyngwrydd (the green grove), took both
its Welsh an