Any one who has passed along the road from Hyde Park Corner to Putney Bridge may have noticed Grendon House, and any one who has done so, must have exclaimed to himself "a girls' school." Palpably a girls' school, it could be nothing else. With the high wall surrounding it, to keep all passers-by from even imagining what was going on within, with the trees which grew inside it, and almost hid the house from view, with its square stiff aspect when one did get a glimpse of it, and with its small windows, each furnished with muslin curtains of an extreme whiteness and primness of arrangement, and through which no face was ever seen to glance out,--certainly it could be nothing but a girls' school. On the door in the wall were two brass plates, the one inscribed in stiff Roman characters "Grendon House;" the other "The Misses Pilgrim," in a running flourishing handwriting. I remember after we had driven up to the door, and were waiting for the bell to be answered, wondering whether the Misses Pilgrim wrote at all like that, and if so, what their character would be likely to be. In the door, by the side of the plate, was a small grating, or grille, through which a cautious survey could be made of any applicant for admission within those sacred precincts. On passing through the door, and entering the inclosure, one found oneself in a small, irregular piece of ground, dignified by the name of the garden, although, from its appearance, it would be supposed that this was a mere pleasantry; but it was not so. Indeed, no such thing as a pleasantry ever was or could be attempted about anything connected with "Grendon House." Certain it is that nothing in the way of a flower was ever acclimatized there. The gloom and frigidity of the place would have been far too much for any flower known in temperate climates to have supported. I remember, indeed, Constance Biglow, who had a brother who had just started on an Arctic expedition, lamented that she had forgotten to ask him to bring home some of the plants from those regions, as an appropriate present for the Misses Pilgrim, for their garden. I know at the time we considered it to be a very good, although a dreadfully disrespectful, joke towards those ladies.