"You would certainly smile if you could see the school I am going to," Frances wrote to her chum, Marjorie Benton, "but when I think of you and the other girls back at the dear old Boston Latin, I feel more like crying.
"First I must tell you about Edith Pearce, the girl in the house where we are staying. She has long flaxen hair which hangs over her shoulders in the most childish way, though she's our age. Her eyes are gray with dark lashes and when she looks at you they are like surprised stars. And she has the most beautiful complexion in the world, just pink and white. She is lovely to look at and I feel like a tanned, homely gipsy beside her. She's sweet too, but very easily shocked and I'm afraid she's not only good but pious. She can never take your place so don't worry, only, as I have to be here, I might as well have some fun with her.
"I go to school with Edith and it is as unlike the Latin School as the North Pole and Boston Common. There are about thirty boarders, some of them little bits of things—Edith calls them 'tinies'—who have been sent home from India where their parents couldn't keep them any longer. About fifty day-scholars attend, from kindergarten age up.
"I'm the only American and I can tell you I was well stared at. At first the girls couldn't believe it, insisted that I must be Scotch or at least Canadian, so now I wear a little United States flag pin all the time. Gracious, but things are different, especially clothes! Mine are the prettiest in school, if I do say it, and Edith thinks so too. She says my 'frocks' are 'chic.'
"Most of the girls, even the big ones almost eighteen, wear their hair hanging and have such dresses,—frocks, I mean. They fit like meal bags, and being combinations of many colors, look perfectly dreadful. And yet the girls are very nice, some of them from really important families.
"To cap the climax, most of them sport ugly black mohair aprons which they call 'alpaca pinnies.' Marjorie, can you imagine what they look like? I told Mother if she wanted me to be English to the extent of wearing a pinafore, I should lie down and die and I'm thankful to say that she simply grinned. But many of the girls have wonderful yellow or red-gold hair and stunning peachy complexions, so they aren't such frights as you'd think.
"Instead of going around from one class to another as in any sensible school, the girls stay in one room and teacher after teacher,—I mean mistress, comes to them. I get so everlastingly tired sitting still. Never before did I realize what a rest it was to walk from class to class and get a chat on the way. The only exceptions to this rule are preparation, when we sit at desks under the eye of a monitress, and gymnasium work.
"Marjorie, when I first beheld that gymnasium teacher, I nearly fainted. Her molasses-colored hair was frizzed hard in front and pinned in a round bun at the back of her head. She had on tight-fitting knee trousers, not bloomers, believe me. Over these she wore a white sweater of a very fancy weave. Over this was a weird tunic of alpaca with two box-plaits in front and three in back. This fell an inch or so below her knees, and every time she bent over or stretched up, those queer tight trousers showed. Her shoes were ordinary ones with heels. The girls wear either their usual frocks or an arrangement like this. I can tell you my pretty brown gym suit was the event of the day when I appeared in it.
"Everybody wears slippers at school, puts them on when she first comes and no wonder, because the English shoes are the worst-looking and clumsiest things ever invented by man. Edith's feet look twice as big in her boots as in slippers. You'd think by their appearance that English feet were a different shape from ours, but they are not; it is only the shoes. They make them so thick and stout that they last for years. Edith was plainly shocked when I told her I had a new pair every few months. She thinks mine suitable only for the house. Well, I will admit that English girls can out-walk me.
"The other mistresses aren't so queer as the gym teacher but look more like other people except that they wear too much jewelry. Everybody wears a great deal and you know what we think at home of ladies who appear on the street with rings and chains and lockets. Edith and her sister Estelle don't dress so, but Mother says they are quite exceptional.