"Is that why we have a double allowance of Roman history now?" queried Ursula.
"Certainly it is. You must finish the book this term, if we have to take extra lessons on it. You naughty girls, don't pull such faces! You ought to be interested in the Emperors."
"Father says some day he'll take me to Rome, and I shall see all their marble statues," observed Mabel.
"Lucky girl!" said Miss Bardsley. "I was fortunate enough to spend one Easter holiday in Rome, and saw the busts of the Emperors at the Capitoline Museum. They're the most beautiful likenesses in the world. You'll appreciate Roman history when you've been to the Forum, and the Colosseum, and all the other famous places."
"Why can't we study history that way?" suggested Ursula. "Suppose you were to take us all to Rome for a month, and we learnt about Romulus and Remus when we were sitting on the Capitoline Hill, and about Trajan in Trajan's Forum, and Diocletian in Diocletian's Bath, and Nero at the Colosseum: it would be so interesting, and we should really remember it!"
"No doubt that is the ideal method; but think of the expense! I am afraid most parents would grumble at the school bills, if teaching history involved a visit to the scene of each occurrence. No! You're supposed to study all this beforehand, and then, when you have a clear idea of ancient and mediaeval times, you can go abroad with an understanding of what you'll see."
"But why shouldn't there be a mutual exchange of schools?" continued Ursula, who liked to discuss questions with Miss Bardsley. "Suppose a class from an Italian school were to come to the Grange for a month, and we were to go and take their place: they'd learn English games, and we should see the old temples and amphitheatres, so we should each have something we couldn't get in our own country."
"It would certainly be a splendid means of learning languages, especially if such an exchange could be effected with a French or a German school. But I fear we are not ripe for that yet; there are too many difficulties in the way of such international visiting. In years to come perhaps the State will organize it, and we shall see little bands of children starting with their teachers to study foreign life and get rid of insular prejudices. It would have to be a special department of the Board of Education."
"If Father gets into Parliament again I'll ask him to bring in a Bill for it," said Mabel. "He's very keen on Secondary Education."
There was so much to be done at Birkwood during the summer term that the days did not seem nearly long enough, though the school rose half an hour earlier than in winter. The girls played cricket as well as tennis, worked in their gardens, and were taken for walks on the downs or on the shore. These expeditions generally had a scientific object in view, wild flowers being brought home to be pressed and added to the school collection, or the pools left by the tide investigated for specimens to enlarge the already flourishing aquarium. There is an old saying: "If you are good, you are happy"; but Miss Drummond believed in the reversing of that moral process, on the theory that "if you are happy, you are good", considering that young girls, at any rate, would be more likely to grow up with nice minds and true instincts if all their environment was beautiful, and their days were filled with pleasures calculated to elevate and refine. There were few of her pupils on whom her system had not the desired effect, and the one or two failures had been gently eliminated, so as not to contaminate the rest.