Then she dismissed the school.
CHAPTER XXX.
DECEIT.
Miss Ashton’s talk had an excellent influence upon the school. Even the wealthy girls felt there was something worth living for but society and fashion. A large proportion of the pupils were from families in moderate circumstances; to them avenues of access to power and influence were opened. To the poor, of whom there were not a few, help in its best sense was offered in ways that faithful diligence would make their own.
In just so far as Miss Ashton had made these two things, faithfulness and diligence, the ground-work of all success, she had given the true character to her school; and as the work of the term began with this demand upon the attention of the pupils, there was a fair prospect of its being the best of the year. The holidays had come and gone. Not a room in the large building but bore evidence of its wealth in Christmas gifts.
New books covered many of the girls’ tables, new pictures hung on their walls; chairs, old and faded, blossomed into new life with their head-rests, their pretty pillows and elaborate scarfs; ribbons of all colors decked lounges, tables, curtains; pen-wipers, 209 lay gracefully by the side of elegant ink-stands, perfume bottles stood on étagères, while the numbers of hand-painted toilet articles, articles to be used in spreads, bric-a-brac of all kinds and descriptions, it would have been hard to number.
Pretty, tasteful surroundings are as much a part of a girl’s true education as the severer curriculum that is offered to her in her studies, and Miss Ashton gave the influences of these Christmas gifts their full value when she weighed the harder work for the teachers which the vacation always brought.
To be sure, there came a time at the beginning of the term when the unwise parents were responsible for much bad work. Those of their children who had come back with boxes filled with Christmas luxuries—candies, pies, cakes, boxes of preserved fruits, nuts, raisins, and whatever would tempt them to eat out of time and place—had little chance to do well in the recitation-room until these were disposed of.