er, and her class mistresses were always
against her being put up, but Miss Clifford insisted on it.

Beth was never anything but miserable at school. The dull routine of
the place pressed heavily upon her, and everything she had to do was
irksome. The other girls accommodated themselves more or less
successfully to the circumstances of their lives; but Beth in herself
was always at war with her surroundings, and her busy brain teemed
with ingenious devices to vary the monotony. The confinement, want of
relaxation, and of proper physical training, very soon told upon her
health and spirits, as indeed they did upon the greater number of the
girls, who suffered unnecessarily in various ways. Beth very soon had
to have an extra hour in bed in the morning, a cup of soup at eleven
o'clock, a tonic three times a day, and a slice of thick bread and
butter with a glass of stout on going to bed; such things were not
stinted during Miss Clifford's administration; but it was a case of
treating effects which all the time were being renewed by causes that
might and ought to have been removed, but were let alone.

St. Catherine's Mansion was regulated on a system of exemplary
dulness. There is a certain dowager still extant who considers it
absurd to provide amusement for people of inferior station. All people
who earn their living are people of inferior station to her; she has
never heard of such a thing as the dignity of labour. Because many of
the girls at St. Catherine's were orphans without means, and would
therefore have to earn their own living as governesses when their
education was finished, the dowager-persons who interested themselves
in the management of the school had used their influence strenuously
to make the life there as much of a punishment as possible. "You
cannot be too strict with girls in their position," was what they
continually averred, their own position by birth being in no way
better, and in some instances not so good, as that of the girls whom
they were depriving of every innocent pleasure natural to their age
and necessary for the good of their health and spirits. They were not
allowed to learn dancing; they had no outdoor games at all, not even
croquet--nothing whatever to exhilarate them and develop them
physically except an hour's "deportment," the very mildest kind of
calisthenics, in the big class-room once a fortnight, and the daily
making of their little beds. For the rest, monotonous walks up a