And what, think you, was that "more"?
Nothing more nor less than that self-same inky and buttery baize, which we indignantly rejected, equally for our own sake as for the sake of those hapless girls shivering in their defrauded bed that we might be warm.
At Dothegirls Hall pupils were "taken in and done for," fed, lodged, taught, for twenty pounds—or one hundred dollars—a year. The luxury of bare comfort could scarcely be expected for that price. Yet Miss Sally must have made profit out of her starvelings, or Dothegirls Hall would not have existed. We always observed that a certain punishment was the usual one for every offence that children are likely to commit. Almost never a day that we did not hear low moanings from one or both of the dormitories, and thus knew that one, sometimes two or three, were incarcerated there "on dry bread" for twenty-four hours.
Once we questioned a victim, our interrogation-points assuming the shape of huge wedges of bread and jam.
"We are sent here on dry bread for missing our lessons, for having our shoes untied, for saying 'Yes' instead of 'Yes, Miss Sally,' for everything we do. I am sometimes three days of the week on dry bread."
"Why don't you write to your papa?" blurted a young American of wrathful turkey-cock aspect.
"Oh, I never had any papa," answered the poor child simply, "and I don't know where mamma lives."
Alas! this innocent remark expressed volumes. We knew that most of the poor creatures "had no papa and didn't know where mamma lived," that they were mere jetsam and flotsam thrown up on this quiet shore from the waves of the great ocean of London and forgotten by all the world save those whose business it was to pay and to receive the twenty pounds a year which was their sole importance.
Of course the best of St. John's belonged to the lodgers, and the best was delightful to tastes that prefer picturesqueness with moderate comfort to smug and dapper luxury. Miss Betsy did our cooking, the school-girls waited upon our table, the boys blacked our boots, "Mam'zel," the French governess from Kilkenny, made our beds when there was no servant, as often happened, birds nested in the ivy of our latticed windows, bees floated up from the fragrant meadows below to hum us to our afternoon naps, and our table-cloth we shook every day ourselves, having a deep purpose in refusing to allow it to be shaken by other hands.
It somehow always happened that the children's recess coincided with that white fluttering from our diamonded window.