“Whom have you heard from? What is the matter with you? Why don’t you divulge the contents?”
“Yes, do, Priscilla, please,” said Annie Brooke, who was the soul of curiosity. “You know, Priscilla, you never could have secrets from your best friends.”
“I have got to leave school,” said Priscilla; “there is nothing more to be said. My uncle has written; he has made up his mind; he says I am to learn farming.”
“Farming!” cried the other two. “You—a girl!”
“Oh, dairy-work,” said Priscilla, “and the managing of a farm-house generally. If I don’t succeed within six months he will apprentice me, he says, to a dressmaker.”
“Oh, poor Priscilla! But you are a lady.”
“Uncle Josiah doesn’t mind.”
“What an old horror he must be!” said Annie Brooke.
“Yes. Don’t let us talk about it.” Priscilla jumped up, walked across the room, and took a book from its place on the shelf. As she did so she turned and faced her two companions.
The room in which the three found themselves was one of the most beautiful of the many beautiful rooms at Mrs Lyttelton’s school. The house was always called the School-House; and the girls, when asked where they were educated, replied with a certain modest pomposity, “At Mrs Lyttelton’s school.” Those who had been there knew the value of the announcement, for no school in the whole of England produced such girls: so well-bred, so thoroughly educated, so truly taught those things which make for honour, for purity, for a life of good report.