awn was enough to put dates and rivers completely out of
her pupils' minds, and to wipe even their best-known facts from their
memories, so she did not repeat her experiment.

"In our grandmothers' days schools always had their holidays in June,"
said Sylvia, yawning, as she idly picked the heads off the daisies on
the lawn one afternoon. "They broke up just when the hot weather
begins, and then they had all the lovely time when the evenings are so
long and you can be out-of-doors until bedtime, and the strawberries
are ripe, and they're cutting the hay. I think it was far nicer. We
don't break up till the 31st of July."

"Yes, but remember they'd have the whole of August at school," said
Marian. "Think of having to come back just at the time when everyone's
going away now to the seaside. And what an enormous term it would make
till Christmas!"

"They had quarters then," said Sylvia, "and a little holiday at
Michaelmas, like the Easter one."

"I don't believe children went home from boarding-schools for it
though. If you read old-fashioned books you will notice that the boys
always talk of 'a half' as if they stayed from Midsummer to Christmas,
and from Christmas to Midsummer again. It must have seemed such a
long while."

"I think it must have been perfectly horrible to go to school then,"
said Nina Forster. "My grandmother tells me stories about when she was
a little girl, and I should have hated it. They had to learn their
lessons off by heart, and stand with their hands behind their backs
and say them just like parrots, and if they forgot or made a mistake
the governess rapped them on the head with her thimble. She called it
'thimble pie'. It used to make them too nervous to remember things."

"How nasty of her! What else did they do?" asked the girls, who liked
to be told tales while they lounged.

"They had to use backboards every day, and chest expanders. Then they
had much plainer food than we have, and they were obliged to finish up
every morsel upon their plates; they mightn't leave anything. They
always had brown bread except on Sundays, and rice puddings nearly
every day. They hardly ever went picnics or excursions; they only used
to go for stupid walks along the roads, two and two, with a mistress
at each end. The music teacher had a silver pencil with a heavy knob
at the end, and if a girl played a wrong note she used to bring it
down with a thump upon her hand. Granny says it made her hate music.