And all your wishes, With many kisses.”
And the scholarly handwriting closes the page:
“I kiss you! Why if I do
I kiss a wild, And teasing child.
But this short note, Papa has wrote
To say at ten, We start again.
Henceforth you should Be very good.”
In autumn the two sisters returned to Mrs. Teed’s school, and things resumed their chequered course. I am told by a schoolfellow of Sophy’s, who had an excellent influence over her at that time, that Mrs. Teed managed the little girl extremely well: and in any case she remained at Belmont for two years, when Mrs. Jex-Blake removed her—evidently to the child’s regret—on the curious ground that she was being “extinguished.” The truth is that the younger pupils were rationed according to age, and, as Sophy was physically as well as mentally in advance of her contemporaries, she was reduced to eating raw acorns to appease her hunger. But Mrs. Jex-Blake was not aware of that detail till long after.
In the meantime, the former teacher, Miss B., had settled at Ramsgate with the pupils already referred to, and Sophy was sent back to her. A more devoted and conscientious teacher one can scarcely imagine, but the arrangement was in some ways a very unfortunate one. At home—and probably also to some extent at Mrs. Teed’s—the religious atmosphere was tempered by a sense of humour as regards the ordinary affairs of life; but of this quality worthy Miss B. seems to have possessed no trace. Henceforth the child lived in a religious forcing house. One hopes that at times she escaped to Sweet Sackermena and her Isles, but the moral atmosphere at Ramsgate was not conducive to such pagan wanderings. Her brain was pronounced excitable, and she was to have but little head employment, but she was taken to church several times a week, and encouraged—or instructed—to write out the sermons to send home to her parents. Here is an example of her work: (Miss B.’s trifling corrections are omitted.)
“Mr. Dunbrain. John iii. 3.* April 2. 1851.