There is little record about the beginning of her work at Cheltenham. Twice Miss Brewer, who was to be Vice-Principal, called upon her: and there are one or two entries in her diary about “shopping” and “turning-out”. Even the date (August 4) on which she set out for Cheltenham with her mother is only known by deduction. One can imagine, however, the spirit in which Dorothea Beale set out into the unknown. Was it to be failure or success? Were her powers equal to the many difficulties that lay before her? Would the Committee turn out to be the kind of people with whom she could work? But we know enough to be sure that she looked to God as her guide in all things, and that in offering herself for this great work of education she laid her life and all her powers at His feet. Dorothea Beale’s first two years at Cheltenham were a struggle from beginning to end. When she arrived the College had begun to go down, and many of the elder girls had left with Miss Procter, so that the oldest pupils were now only thirteen or fourteen years of age. Mrs. Raikes in her “Life,” quotes a description of her from a pupil who was at the school when she arrived:-- “I can see her now as she appeared in reality--the slight, young figure, the very gentle, gliding movements, the quiet face with the look of intense thoughtfulness and utter absence of all poor and common stress and turmoil, the intellectual brow, the wonderful eyes with their calm outlook and their expression of inner vision.” One of her first decisions was to continue and make permanent the rule of silence, which Miss Procter had introduced at the beginning of the college. She was, at first, full of doubts as to the wisdom of this rule but was so well satisfied with the results that she never saw any reason to alter it. Pupils were allowed to speak only with a teacher’s permission, which was always given when it was necessary. Her reasons for the ordaining of this rule were to inculcate habits of self-control, to prevent the making of friendships of which parents might not approve, to secure concentration and good discipline. It was very rigidly enforced, and if a girl broke it only a few times in the term a remark to that effect was inevitably put into her Report. One of the jokes frequently made against the Ladies’ College was that no Cheltenham girl could talk! The history of these two years is given very graphically in Miss Beale’s History of the College, from which the following account is almost entirely taken. When Miss Beale was appointed there were only sixty-nine girls left, of whom fifteen had already given notice (of these only one actually left). Only £400 was left out of the original capital. The ladies who had kept boarding-houses gave up on account of the uncertainty, and several of the original shareholders sold their £10 shares for £5.