ssisted in setting up the Clothing Club.

Mrs. Yonge's first list of Easter prizes contains twenty names of girls,
and the years that have passed have left but few of them here. A large
Bible bound in plain brown leather was the highest prize; Prayer Books,
equally unornamented, New Testaments, and Psalters, being books
containing only the Psalms and Matins and Evensong, were also given, and
were then, perhaps, more highly valued than the dainty little coloured
books every one now likes to have for Sunday. Then there were frocks,
coarse straw bonnets, and sometimes pocket handkerchiefs, for these were
not by any means such universal possessions as could be wished, and only
came out on Sunday. As to gloves, silk handkerchiefs, parasols, muffs,
or even umbrellas, the children thought them as much out of their reach
as a set of pearls or diamonds, but what was worse, their outer clothing
was very insufficent, seldom more than a thin cotton frock and tippet,
and the grey duffle cloaks, which were thought a great possession, were
both slight and scanty.

About 1826, Mrs. Yonge was looking at the bit of waste land that had once
served as a roadway to the field at the back of Otterbourne House, when
she said, "How I wish I had money enough to build a school here." "Well,"
said Mrs. Bargus, "You shall have what I can give." The amount was
small, but with it Mr. Yonge contrived to put up one room with two new
small ones at the back, built of mud rough cast, and with a brick floor,
except for the little bedroom being raised a step, and boarded.

The schoolroom was intended to hold all the children who did not go to
Mrs. Yates, both boys and girls, and it was sufficient, for, in the first
place, nobody from Fryern-hill came. Mrs. Green had a separate little
school there. Then the age for going to school was supposed to be six.
If anyone sent a child younger, the fee was threepence instead of a
penny. The fee for learning writing and arithmetic was threepence, for
there was a general opinion that they were of little real use, and that
writing letters would waste time (as it sometimes certainly does).
Besides this, the eldest daughter of a family was always minding the
baby, and never went to school; and boys were put to do what their
mothers called "keeping a few birds" when very small indeed, while other
families were too rough to care about education so that the numbers were
seldom over thirty.

There were no such peop