e had been boarders for the last
two years, was an exceedingly nice school. It stood on a hill-side well
raised above the river, and behind it there was a little wood where
bulbs had been naturalized, and where, in their season, you might find
clumps of pure white snowdrops, sheets of glorious daffodils, and later
on lovely masses of the lily of the valley. In the garden all kinds of
sweet things seemed to be blooming the whole year round. Golden aconite
buds opened with the January term, and in a wild patch above the rockery
the delicious heliotrope-scented _Petasites fragrans_ blossomed to tempt
the bees which an hour's sunshine would bring forth from the hives,
scarlet _Pyrus japanica_ was trained along the wall under the front
windows, and early flowering cherry and almond blossoms made delicate
pink patches of color long before leaves were showing on the trees.

Beautiful surroundings in a school can be quite as important a part of
our education as the textbooks through which we toil. We are made up of
body, mind, and spirit, and the developing soul needs satisfying as much
as the physical or mental part of us. Long years afterwards, though we
utterly forget the lessons we may have learnt as children, we can still
vividly recall the effect of the afternoon sun streaming through the
fuchsia bush outside the open French window where we sat conning those
unremembered tasks. The lovely things of nature, assimilated half
unconsciously when we are young, equip us with a purity of heart and a
refinement of taste that should safeguard us later, and keep our
thoughts at a lofty level.

The "beauty cult" was a decided feature of Chilcombe Hall. Miss Walters
was extremely artistic; she painted well in water-colors and had
exquisite taste. Many of the charming decorations in the house had been
done by herself; she had designed and stencilled the frieze of drooping
clusters of wistaria that decorated the dining-hall wall; the framed
landscapes in the drawing-room were her own work, and she herself always
superintended the arrangement of the bowls of flowers that gave such
brightness to the schoolrooms.

Her twenty pupils had on the whole a decidedly pleasant time. There were
just enough of them to develop the community spirit, but not too many
to obliterate the individual, or, as Ida Spenser put it: "You can get up
a play, or a dance, or any other sort of fun, and yet we all know each
other like a kind of big family."

"Div