"It is too wonderful," she wrote; "I was the most miserable girl in all the world when I got your telegram. I scarcely knew what I was doing, and then Mrs. Clavering took me into her oak parlor and told me still further bad news. That I—oh, father dear, oh, father—that I was to go and live with Helen Dartmoor. How could you think of it, father? But there, she said it had to be, and I felt nearly wild. You don't know what I was suffering, although I tried so very hard to be brave. I am suffering still, but not quite so badly, for what do you think happened in the evening.
"You know, or perhaps you don't know, that at the end of summer there is always such a glorious day—it is called Cherry Feast Day, and is given in honor of the school, which is called Cherry Court School. The whole day is given up to festivities of every sort and description, and all the neighborhood are invited to a great big Cherry Feast in the evening.
"The feast is held in the walled-in garden, which is lit with colored lanterns. In the very centre of the garden is a grass sward, the greenest grass you ever saw, father, and, oh, so smooth—as smooth as velvet, and on this grass, lit with fairy lamps, the girls dance all kinds of stately, wonderful, old-fashioned dances, and the neighbors sit round and watch, and then at the end we all go into the house, into the great oak hall in the middle, and Mrs. Clavering gives the prizes to the lucky girls.
"Of course, feasts of cherries are the order of the hour, and we wear cherry ornaments if possible. You cannot imagine how full of cherries we are in the school, even to cherry-colored ribbons, you know.
"Well, yesterday, when your dreadful telegram came, was the day when we were to draw up a programme for the Cherry Feast, and when all we girls came into the oak parlor in the evening—I mean all the girls of the Upper school, for the little ones, although they enjoy the feast splendidly at the time, are never allowed to know much of the preparations—well, when we were all in the oak parlor who should come in but Mrs. Clavering and such a tall, stately, splendid-looking man. His name is Sir John Wallis, and it seems, father dear, that he knows all about you, for he called me up afterwards and spoke to me, and he put his arm round my waist, and when he said good-bye he even kissed me, and he said that you and he were some of the heroes before Sebastopol. Oh, father, he did speak so splendidly of you, and he looked so splendid himself, I quite loved him, I did really. But there, how I am digressing, father!
"Mrs. Clavering gave out the programme for the day—the usual sort, you know, the dancing on the lawn in the evening, and the crowds of spectators, and the assembling in the big hall for the prizes to be given out to all the lucky girls who had won them.
"Of course, I won't get any this year. I have not been at school long enough, although I am trying and working very hard. Well, Mrs. Clavering read out the usual programme and we all stood by and listened, and I could not help glancing at Sir John, although I had not spoken to him then, and did not know, not a bit of it, that he knew you, darling, precious father.
"But all of a sudden Sir John himself came forward and he took Mrs. Clavering's place on the little rostrum, as they call it, and he spoke in such a loud, penetrating, and yet beautiful voice, and he said that he, with Mrs. Clavering's permission, had a scheme to propose.
"He began by saying how he loved the school, how he had always loved it, how his own mother had been educated at Cherry Court School, and how he thought there was no school like it in the world, and then he said that he was anxious, now that he had returned home to live and was growing an old man himself, to do something for the school, and he proposed there and then to offer it a Scholarship.
"Do you know what a scholarship is, father? I thought only men won scholarships. Well, anyhow, he did offer a Scholarship, such a magnificent one. It was to be held by the girl who was best in conduct, best in deportment, and best in her educational work, in the following October, and she was to hold it for three years, and what do you think the scholarship was?