Chapter Ten.
West End School was conducted on lines differing somewhat both from those of the modern public school and the old polite finishing seminary for young ladies. It accommodated in all about fifty pupils, and although games and examinations formed important parts of the curriculum, they were not regarded as being of such absorbing importance as in many modern schools. Miss Bretherton was a woman of lofty aims, who was continually looking beyond her pupils’ schooldays to the time when they should be the women of Britain; the wives and mothers, and sisters and friends of the men who were to carry on the work of our great Empire, and who, humanly speaking, would do that work well or ill according to the manner in which their womankind influenced their lives. Miss Bretherton realised that the chief result of school study was not the mere storing of information, but the training of the brain to grapple with the great problems of life. Lessons were only means to an end. Half of that which was learnt with such pains would be forgotten before a dozen years had passed by; but the deeper lessons of industry, patience, self-restraint, would remain as habits of daily life. Formation of character—that was the one absorbing object which the Head held in view, and which underlay every scheme and arrangement. Miss Bretherton’s manner was so staid, her nature so reserved, that her pupils were apt to credit her with being dull and easily deceived, little guessing that those quiet eyes were as searchlights turned upon their little foibles and vanities. During Dreda’s first week at school her mood was pretty equally divided between enjoyment and misery. She loved the big, full, bustling house, the constant companionship of her kind, the chats over the study fire, the games in the playground; in a lesser degree she enjoyed the lessons also—those, at least, in which she was fairly proficient—and found Miss Drake a most interesting and inspiring teacher. She loved the interest which she excited, the flattering remarks of other girls, the quiet devotion of Susan; but she hated the rules of “early to bed and early to rise”; found it a penance to be obliged to practise scales, with icy fingers, for forty minutes before breakfast; was fretted and humiliated by her ignorance on many important subjects, and at the end of the long day often found herself tired, disappointed, and—hungry!
There is no doubt that a school menu is a distinct trial to the girl fresh from home. The girl accustomed to mix cream in a cup of freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee takes badly to the weak, groundy liquid so often supplied in its place. She grows tired to death of beef, mutton, and resurrection pie, and is inclined to declare that if the only way to become strong is to consume everlasting suet puddings, why, then, as a choice of evils, she prefers to be weak!
“Is it always as bad as this?” Dreda demanded plaintively of her room-mates as they brushed their locks in company before retiring to bed on the evening of her fifth day at West House. “Do you never have anything nice and light, that doesn’t taste of suet and oven? Does it get better as summer comes on?”
“Worse!” pronounced Nancy shortly.
Dreda had devoted five whole days to the study of Nancy’s character, and to this hour could not make up her mind whether she most liked or detested her. She was the oddest of girls: nothing seemed to excite her, nothing to trouble, nothing to please. Occasionally she would show swift, kindly impulses, as when she had offered to become Dreda’s coach; but not a flicker of disappointment did she portray if such impulses were repulsed, not a gleam of pleasure if they were accepted. At other times she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making the worst of a situation and playing the part of Job’s comforter.
“Worse!” she sighed. “Much worse! Because it’s warm weather, and your fancy lightly turns to nicer things. It’s a bit of a cross to see strawberries in the shop windows, and them come home to ‘Brother, where art thou?’”
“What brother?”