"As for lessons, we have to study. They expect a lot of grammar and parsing, and dates in history and solid facts in geography and all that. Mother approves; she thinks the English system much less faddy than at home. We have Bible instruction in regular lessons. I'll admit that these English girls know more than I do about things in books, but they haven't any idea what's going on in the present world. They didn't know much about the Panama canal and the tolls. Win howled when I said I explained it to them and vowed he'd give a dollar to have heard me. And several didn't know who was president of the United States. Imagine that, when we're the most important republic in the world! I knew their old king.
"We begin school at half-past eight and have prayers and a Bible exercise. Different classes follow until eleven when a gong rings and everybody rushes into the garden, a lovely place with box-edged beds and a sun dial and gravel walks. There are myrtles and geraniums, great big bushes of them, and japonicas and heavenly wall-flowers and trees of lemon verbena and fuchsias up to the eaves. This is solid truth, and in November, too.
"In the garden we find a table with jugs of milk,—notice my English, please—and biscuit, that is, crackers, and we gobble and faith, we have reason! Studying so hard makes one famished. Then recreation follows for half an hour and we play ball or tennis. Some of the girls are splendid players. School again until two, when we day-scholars leave.
"Three afternoons a week, we have to go back for gym work and English composition, which is beastly. On Wednesday there is no school.
"Do you want to know what I've learned in one week of school in Jersey?
"Well, I can speak three sentences in French. I'll write you in French next time.
"I know that Amos and Hosea and Isaiah were all prophets and said that
Israel was a very bad place.
"I know that Paleolithic man was probably the first inhabitant of Great
Britain.
"I know how few people like to join mission study classes.
"And I know that I love you."