entirely on the Senior Oxford Curriculum
and accomplishments, was to add an agricultural side to its course.
There was to be a lady teacher, fresh from the Birchgate Horticultural
College, who would start poultry-keeping and bee-keeping on the latest
scientific principles, and would plant the garden with crops of
vegetables. She could have a few land workers to assist her, and the
girls, in relays, could study her methods. Miss Todd, who in choosing a
career had hesitated between teaching and horticulture, snatched at the
opportunity of combining the two. She was bubbling over with enthusiasm.
In imagination she saw Pendlemere a flourishing Garden Colony, setting
an educational example to the rest of the scholastic world. Her girls,
trained in both the scientific and practical side of agriculture in
addition to their ordinary curriculum, would be turned out equipped for
all contingencies, either of emigration, or a better Britain. She
considered their health would profit largely. She explained her views to
them in detail, painting rose-coloured pictures of the delights in store
for them in the spring and summer. The girls, very much thrilled at the
prospect, dispersed to talk it over.

"Is Pendlemere to be a sort of farm, then?" asked Wendy.

"Looks like it, if we're to keep hens and bees, and grow all our own
vegetables! Bags me help with the chickens. I love them when they're all
yellow, like canaries. Toddlekins hinted something about launching out
into a horse if things prospered."

"A horse! Goody, what fun!" exulted Diana. "I just _adore_ horses! Bags
me help with stable-work, then. I'd groom it instead of learning my
geography or practising scales. I say, I call this a ripping idea!"

"Don't congratulate yourself too soon," qualified Magsie. "You'll
probably find the geography and the scales are tucked in somehow. All
the same, I think it sounds rather sporty."

"It will be a change, at any rate, and we'll feel we're marching with
the times."

"When does the 'back-to-the-land' teacher come?"

"On Friday, I believe."

Miss Chadwick, the graduate of Birchgate Horticultural College, who was
to run the new experiment, arrived at the end of the week, and brought
two students as her assistants. They were a fresh, jolly-looking trio,
with faces rosy from open-air work, and serviceable hands which caused a
considerable flutter among those of the school who went in for manicure.
At tea-time they talked gaily of o