Monitress Merle | Page 5

establishment where about twenty-four children had been educated by Miss Pollard and her sister Miss Fanny, who were the daughters of the late Vicar of the parish. They were neither of them particularly learned or up to date, but they had a happy knack with girls, and had been especially successful in the care of delicate pupils. The remarkably mild climate of Durracombe made the place peculiarly suitable for those who had been born in India or other hot countries, and so many more boarders had been entered for this term that the school was practically doubled. Recognising the fact that this sudden enlargement in numbers ought also to mean a march forward in other ways, the sisters were wise enough to seize their golden opportunity and completely reorganise their methods. They were fortunate in being able to get hold of the house next to their own, and, turning that into a hostel for boarders, they devoted the whole of 'The Moorings' to classrooms. They engaged a thoroughly competent and reliable mistress, with a university degree and High School experience, and gave her carte blanche to revise the curriculum and institute what innovations she thought fit. They allowed her to choose her own assistant mistress, and made fresh arrangements for visiting teachers, reserving for themselves only a very few of the classes, and concentrating most of their energies on the management of the hostel. These new plans gave great satisfaction to both parents and pupils.
"It will be rather nice to have somebody modern at the head of things, so long as Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny aren't entirely shelved," declared Merle.
"They're perfect dears! We couldn't do without them," agreed Mavis.
"But they're not clever!"
"Um--I don't know! It depends what you call clever! They mayn't be B.A.'s and all the rest of it, but they're well read, and they can sketch and sing and play and do a hundred things that a great many graduates can't. I call them 'cultured,' that's the right name for them. They're such absolute and perfect ladies. It's a style you really don't meet every day. And they're so pretty with their pink cheeks and their silver hair, like the sweet old-fashioned pictures of eighteenth-century beauties in powder and patches. I love to look at them, and to listen to the gentle refined way they talk--I think they're adorable!"
"So they are-but you want something more in a school. I hope the fresh teacher will be a regular sport, and that she'll use slang sometimes, and play hockey. That's my ideal of a head mistress."
Miss Mitchell, the new peg upon which so much was now to depend at 'The Moorings,' might not have been blamed for regarding Tuesday morning as somewhat of an ordeal. If she was nervous, however, she managed to conceal her feelings, and bore the introduction to her prospective pupils with cheerful calm.
Forty-six girls, taking mental stock of her, decided instantly that she was 'the right sort.' She was tall, in her middle twenties, had a fresh complexion, light brown hair, a brisk decisive manner, and a pleasant twinkle in her hazel eyes. She was evidently not in the least afraid of her audience, a fact which at once gave her the right handle. She faced their united stare smilingly.
"I'm very pleased to meet you all!" she began. "I hope we shall work together splendidly and have an extremely happy term. As Miss Pollard has just told you, there have been so many changes at 'The Moorings' that it is practically a new school. It's a tremendous opportunity to be able to make a fresh start like this. We can make our own traditions and our own rules. Some of you have been at the school before and some have been at other schools, but I want you all to forget past traditions and unite together to make 'The Moorings' the biggest success that can possibly be. We're all going to love it and to be very loyal to it. We hope to do well with our work, and well with our games. I must explain to you later about all the various societies which we mean to start, but I want to tell you that though there is plenty of work in front of you there's also plenty of fun, and that if every girl makes up her mind to do her very best all round we shall get on grandly. Now I am going to read out the lists of the various forms, and then you can march away in turn to your own classrooms."
In making her arrangements for the reorganisation of the school Miss Mitchell had decided to have no Sixth form as yet. The girls were all under seventeen, and she did not consider any of them sufficiently advanced to be