In the height of the cherry season Mrs. Clavering always gave a cherry feast. It was the event of the entire year, and the girls looked forward to it, making all their arrangements in connection with it, counting the hours until it arrived, and looking upon it as the great feature of their school year. Everything turned on whether the cherries were good and the weather fine. There was no greater stimulus to hard work than the merest mention of this golden day, which came as a rule towards the end of June and just before the summer vacation. For Cherry Court School was old-fashioned according to our modern ideas, and one of its old-fashioned plans was to give holidays at the end of June instead of the end of July, so that the girls had the longest, finest days at home, and came back to work at the end of August refreshed and strengthened, and prepared for a good long tug at lessons of all sorts until Christmas. The school consisted of twenty girls, never more and never less, for Mrs. Clavering was too great a favorite and had too wise and excellent ideas with regard to education ever to be without pupils, and never more, for she believed twenty to be the perfect number to whom she could give every attention and offer every advantage. The school, small as it was, was divided into two sections, the Upper and the Lower. In the Upper school were girls from eighteen to fourteen years of age, and in the Lower some of the small scholars numbered even as few years as six. There was a resident French mistress in the school and also a resident German, and there was an English governess, and, of course, Mrs. Clavering herself; but the other teachers came from the neighboring town of Hartleway to instruct the pupils in all those accomplishments which were in the early seventies considered necessary for a young lady's education. I can assure those of my readers who are well acquainted with modern schools that no one could have been more particular than Mrs. Clavering with regard to her girls. In such things as deportment and nice manners and all the code which signifies politeness, and in the almost lost art of brilliant conversation, she could instruct as very few other people could in her day, and then what accomplishments she did teach were thorough. The girls were taught French properly, they understood the grammar of the language, and could also speak it nicely; and their German was also very fair, if not quite as thorough as their French. And their music had some backbone in it, for a little of the science was taught as well as the practice, and their singing was very sweet and true. They could also recite, those of them who had any gift for it, quite beautifully, and if they had a turn for acting that also was brought to the fore and made the most of. As to their knowledge of the English language, it bade fair to eclipse many of the High School girls of the present day, for they did understand in the first place its