More than a hundred teachers, many of them belonging to Cheltenham, were present for the first days of the conference in 1884. Some twenty outside teachers remained for the whole month. The time was long enough to foster real intimacy. A great deal of time and thought had been devoted to arrangements beforehand, in order that all might get the utmost benefit from the time. In this Miss Beale received much willing co-operation from her own staff, and Miss Caines lent Fauconberg House and her servants. Miss Beale was specially anxious that during the Quiet Days all should have the opportunity of keeping well the silence which was observed. Those who had no rooms of their own had little sitting-rooms assigned them in the College, the music-rooms being available for this purpose. That part of the Cheltenham world which still regarded Miss Beale with suspicion and to whom a Retreat appeared, even as late as 1884, to be a dangerous High Church innovation, raised a cry of alarm. The music-rooms had been turned into cells! It is not known what the word implied to those who made the outcry, and it was soon silenced, but it caused a little annoyance at the time. The month passed in teaching and helping, though gladly given out of her own holidays, was an undoubted physical strain to Miss Beale. She wrote to Mrs. Benson:— ‘I wish I had never said I would try to write a paper for Thursday at the Health Exhibition. I do not like to leave even for a day, as one ought to go on trying to help those who remain. We do feel so grateful for all the time and thought you and the Archbishop have been good enough to give us, especially in the selection of Mr. Stanton. For myself, I should never have had the courage to go on; (one gets nervous)....’ And she was tired. The last entry in her diary for that month is this:— ‘_August 27._—End of month at Fauconberg. Last address not good, and result of neglect.’ Yet Miss Beale probably felt such a strain far less than any other head-mistress would have done, so absorbingly interesting to her was this kind of work. She always looked back with great pleasure on that time. She treasured the letters she received afterwards from those who had been present, dated from it lasting friendships made with some who had come from other schools, and felt it had drawn her nearer to some of her own teachers.