le as trained mistresses then. The National
Society had a school for masters, but they were expensive and could only
be employed in large towns; so all that could be looked for was a kind,
motherly, good person who could read and do needlework well. And the
first mistress was Mrs. Creswick, a pleasant-looking person with a pale
face and dark eyes, who had been a servant at Archdeacon Heathcote's, and
had since had great troubles. She did teach the Catechism, reading, and
work when the children were tolerably good and obeyed her, but boys were
a great deal too much for her, and she had frail health, and such a bad
leg that she never could walk down the lane to the old Church. So, after
Sunday School, the children used to straggle down to Church without
anyone to look after them, and sit on the benches in the aisle and do
pretty much what they pleased, except when admonished by Master Oxford's
stick.

Mr. Shuckburgh had by this time come to reside in the parish, in the
house which is now the post-office, and there was at last a double
Service on the Sunday.

The next thing was to consider what was to be done about the boys, who
could not be made to mind Mrs. Creswick. A row of the biggest sat at the
back of the school, with their heels to the wall, and by constant kicking
had almost knocked a hole through the mud wall; so the Vicar, who was now
the Archdeacon's son, the Rev. Gilbert Wall Heathcote, gave permission
for the putting up another mud and rough cast school house near the old
Church, for the boys, in an empty part of the Churchyard to the north-
east, where no one had ever been buried.

However, there Master Oxford was installed as schoolmaster, coming all
the way down from his house on the hill (a pretty-timbered cottage, now
pulled down). He and his boys had a long way to walk to their school,
but he taught them all he knew and set them a good example. The boys
were all supposed to go to him at six years old, and most were proud of
the promotion. One little fellow was known to go to bed an hour or two
earlier that he might be six years old the sooner! But some dreaded the
good order enforced by the stick. There was one boy in particular, who
had outgrown the girls' school, and was very troublesome there. He would
not go to the boys', and his mother would not make him, saying she feared
he would fall into the water. "Well," said Mrs. Bargus, who was a most
bright, kindly old lady of eighty, "I'll m