The mistresses were almost all primarily selected for their proficiency in games, except the French teacher, a Swiss lady who gave all her lessons in broken English.
The Scripture classes were taken by Miss Melody herself, in each of the three divisions of the school. History was imparted in the usual patchwork of dates, anecdotes, and names famous in Great Britain between the reign of King Alfred the Great and that of Queen Anne, geography was not taught beyond the Upper Third, botany was an extra, natural history ignored, and plain needlework not taught. Mathematics, except in the cases of one or two peculiarly constituted beings, presented itself to the girls, as to the majority of feminine minds, as a compound of meaningless "sums" that, if juggled with by a series of unrelated processes, might "come out right" at the end. Those of the pupils, Lily Stellenthorpe amongst them, who had least liking or aptitude for figures, received, by way of inculcating these, an hour's private and extra tuition in arithmetic once a week. Almost each one of them still surreptitiously counted upon her fingers, as little children do, believing it to be a form of cheating, but entirely unfamiliar with any more legitimate method of achieving the same result.
Literature, kept within the realms of English achievement, generally embraced one Shakespearean play thoroughly prepared, out of a school edition, for a coming examination. Shakespearean plays not judged suitable for this purpose, many of the girls did not even know by name. A few had "read Scott, because my young brother had to swot up 'Woodstock' last hols." Scarcely one could connect the name of any classic with that of its author, and all, without exception, would have felt heartily ashamed of being found, under no form of compulsion, to be reading poetry.
Few, it may be added, ran any such risk.
The religious principles of the school were Church of England, but religion, to Lily's relief, did not imply the insistent advertisement of outward and minor pieties that had prevailed at the convent.
A short daily service was held in the school chapel, and there were prayers morning and evening. Miss Melody held "Sunday talks" for the elder girls, of which the prevalent notes were brightness and broad-mindedness. Free discussions of Bible and Catechism readings were encouraged, with implicit avoidance of certain of the Commandments which apparently were not fit subjects for explanation.
Indeed, the nuns themselves could have displayed no more silent and resolute modesty than prevailed at Bridgecrap upon subjects that, sooner or later, must become of vital moment to every one of the feminine creatures there being educated.
V
Lily formed and retained a very acute impression of the Bridgecrap atmosphere, during the three years that she spent there, but hardly a single personality in the place made any lasting effect upon her memory. Yet it was during those three years that a secret and shamed conviction slowly crystallized within her; they were all what she inwardly called Real Live People, and she herself was only a sham. However much she might try to be like everyone else, sooner or later they would find her out.