The garden, mentioned in the early College reports as the ‘pleasure grounds,’ was a special delight to Miss Beale. In 1858 it was still untouched, and had many beautiful trees; one, a standard apricot tree, was—happy omen! covered with golden fruit in that first autumn of her life at Cheltenham. The house itself was beginning to change its character of family residence to that of a building adapted for school purposes, and before very long even the rooms given up for the use of the Principal and the Vice-Principal were encroached upon. Nor were those rooms furnished in character with the stately outside of the house. ‘The second-hand furniture procured would not have delighted people of æsthetic taste. Curtains were dispensed with as far as possible, and it was questioned whether a carving-knife was required by the Principal in her furnished apartments.’[38] To such domestic details Miss Beale was indifferent, but it must have been less easy to practise an economy which limited the extension of her work. ‘The teaching staff was reduced as low as possible, and the Principal and Vice-Principal gave up their half-holiday to chaperone those who took lessons from masters. The Principal taught all the English subjects to Classes I. and II., besides giving weekly lessons in Holy Scripture throughout the College.’ So long as the chief task of the Lady Principal was to prevent the College losing further ground, so long as her time and thought outside school hours were absorbed by anxiety over every pupil who came and went, still more over those who failed to come, there could be no rapid process of development. But it would have been impossible for Miss Beale to take up an existing educational work without at once making her individual mark upon it, and from the first the school felt the grasp of her able hand. At Casterton she had longed at once to change, to reform. At Cheltenham remodelling rather than revolution was her aim—fulfilment and wise development.