I hope you admire that paragraph! But for fear you should imagine I am about to turn authoress, I must let you into the secret: it is an application to my situation of a passage I met with yesterday in a novel one of the girls has smuggled in.
It was about four o'clock when we arrived. We were shown into the school-room, where we found about nine other girls, from twelve to seventeen years old, with whom we soon made acquaintance. We first asked each other's names; then communicated our parentage; then followed questions as to previous schools, and as to what sort of place this was. Accounts varied considerably. Some thought it very well, and liked Mrs. Wirrelston. Some thought it detestable, and detested Mrs. Wirrelston. One and all detested Miss Smith.
The elder girls seemed very nice; but, from always having been at school I suppose, they struck me as excessively ignorant of the world, compared with us, and still more ignorant of books. They were children to us. Our superior knowledge, which was quickly discovered, made us looked up to, and we were assailed with questions. But if we were for a moment looked up to on that account, we speedily lost our supremacy on another. One of the younger girls asked me how much pocket-money we had brought?
"Twenty shillings each."
"Twenty shillings! what only twenty shillings! Why I brought five pounds."
"And I, ten," proudly ejaculated another.
I felt deeply ashamed; the more so as I observed the girls interchange certain looks, which were but too intelligible. Next day we had the mortification of hearing each new comer informed, and in a tone of disgusted astonishment, that "the Vyners had only brought twenty shillings each. Only think!"
I instantly wrote home to papa. But his answer was, that we must learn to be economical, that he was learning it himself, and that mama thinks it highly necessary we should early learn to submit to small privations. I hate economy!
To return to our school, however. The first afternoon was spent in chat and games. Lessons were not to commence till the morrow. And as the morrow was very much like other days, I may sketch our routine. While dressing, we have to learn a verse of scripture out of a book called "Daily Bread." (I got punished the other day for saying it was "very dry bread, too." That odious, little, pimply Miss Pinkerton told Miss Smith of it.) This verse we all repeat one after the other when prayers are finished; and as I seldom know my verse when we come down, I contrive to sit at the end of the table and learn it by hearing all the others say it before me. One of the elder and one of the little girls then collect the bibles and put them away; while the rest of us, rank and file, begin to march, heads up, chests expanded, toes out. This military exercise is not, I believe, to fashion us into a regiment of grenadiers—the Drawing-room Invincibles—because, when I suggested that we ought to have moustachios and muskets, I received a severe reprimand for my levity. Besides, we vary the march with little operations scarcely to be called military: touching, or trying to touch, the floor with the tips of our fingers without bending our knees, making our elbows meet behind our backs, &c. We then go into breakfast, and are allowed to exchange our merciless slaughter of French idiom, for the freely flowing idiom of our mother tongue. I have not had the French mark yet, except for speaking English; my French, I am happy to say, is beyond the criticism of the girls: what their mastery of the language is, you may guess by that! You may also gain a faint idea of it from these specimens. I passed the mark to little Miss Pinkerton only yesterday, because she asked me for my penknife in this elegant style: "Madle. voulez vous pretez moi votre COUTEAU?" Whereupon I whipped the mark into her hands with a generous "Le voilà." Last week she said, "Je n'ai pas encore FAIT;" for "I have not done (finished) yet"—and pointed out to me, "Comme vous avez mal coupé vos CLOUS"—meaning, that I had not cut my finger nails well!
At meals, we are permitted to speak like Christians. After breakfast we have half an hour's recreation. We play, or read, or work, or, twining an arm round our confidant's waist, interchange confidences respecting the loves we have had, and the husbands we intend to have. Then come lessons. There are five pianos—and five unhappy girls are always practising on them. We arrange our lessons so as to take the pianos in turns, and by this means, we all get our practice, and the thumping never ceases. What a life those pianos lead! How I wish Miss Smith were one of them!