Then they mightn't send letters home without the headmistress seeing
them, and she used to make them write the most absurd rubbish, so that
they weren't their own letters at all. Granny had her twelfth
birthday at school, and when she wrote to thank her father for his
present the governess insisted on her putting: 'Now that I have
attained to my twelfth year I feel I am no longer a child, and must
put away childish things'. Wasn't it stupid? They used to write the
most beautiful hand, though, far, far neater than ours, but they took
a fearfully long time over it. They'd spend a week at an exercise that
we do in a day. The teachers were very strict and very cross, and
there seemed to be so many punishments--being sent to bed, and being
kept in, and learning long columns of spelling. Granny says girls are
spoilt now, but I know I'd rather go to Miss Kaye's than to the school
she was at."

"I should think so," said the others; "I don't believe any other could
be really nicer than this."

"I sometimes wish I'd gone to a different one, though," said Jessie
Ellis.

"Why?"

"Because my three cousins were here, and they're so tremendously
clever. It's rather hard when you're not very bright yourself, and the
teachers keep saying: 'You mean to tell me you can't learn this, and
you an Ellis!' I think they must have taken my share of the brains in
the family. At any rate it's not quite fair to blame me because I
can't do everything they did. Ethel won a scholarship for Newnham, and
I never even scrape through the easiest class exam as a rule. I don't
care much. Mother says I must be a home girl and like sewing. I'm glad
I don't get my pocket money by my marks."

"Oh, but does anybody?"

"Yes, I knew a girl who did. Her father gave her sixpence every week
she was top, and nothing at all if she was lower than halfway in the
class. He said it was to make her work."

"Before I came to school I used to get my pocket money for doing
things," said Brenda. "I had a penny for every hour I practised, so if
I wanted to save up I used to do a little extra at the piano; then
there was a penny a week for wearing my gloves, and another penny for
using the back stairs, and a halfpenny for eating salt, and another
halfpenny if I remembered to wipe my boots. I rather liked it."

"I don't think it was nice at all," declared Marian. "It was bribing
you to do what you ought to have done in any case."

"Yes, so it was," echoed Gwennie. "We