For a long time she and her sister Fanny, little more than a year younger, were companions in their lessons, which were in every respect alike. Bessie's were read aloud to her; she learnt easily, her memory was good, and she made rapid progress. In French and German the grammar was read to her, and she worked the exercises verbally. The governess, Miss Lander, was devoted to her pupils, and specially interested in Bessie, so that she turned to account every hint and suggestion as to special methods for the blind. She drew threads across a piece of paper, which was fixed to a frame, and taught the child to write in the ordinary way. There was a box of raised letters which could be used for spelling lessons, and there was leaden type with raised figures for arithmetic lessons. The letters were arranged on an ordinary board; but the figures were placed in a grooved board. Now arithmetic was the most difficult and distasteful of all Bessie's lessons; the placing of the figures correctly was a very perplexing task, and the working of sums an intricate problem. But she did her duty and made her way steadily to compound division, a stage beyond which no woman was expected to advance fifty years ago. Miss Lander did her best to explain the various processes, but the sums, alas, were only too often wrong, and a passionate outburst would succeed the announcement of failure. That little episode of the chair was probably not unconnected with arithmetic. She was keenly interested in astronomical lessons, and the home-made orrery, which explained the relative position of sun, moon, and planets, was a source of unfailing interest. The little fingers fluttered over the planets and followed their movements with great delight. An eager, intelligent child, with parents and teachers all anxious to smoothe her way and remove difficulties, we need not wonder that youth was a happy time for her: "the brightest and happiest of all the children," she is said to have been. "The Principal's Lodgings," as the old-fashioned, rambling house in High Street, Oxford, was called, has no garden whatever. The front door opens into a dark hall; spacious cupboards to the right; to the left the dining-room; in front of you passages, doors, and two difficult staircases. There was no one, we are told, who had not fallen up or down these dark winding stairs except Bessie. On the first floor to the front, with five windows looking into High Street, is the drawing-room. This was divided, and one part of it was converted into a schoolroom. The Principal's study was on the same floor at the back of the house. What is known as the north wing stretches back, and has two or three small rooms which can easily be isolated. It was in them that Bessie was nursed through scarlet fever. There is also a south wing with excellent kitchens and good servants' rooms.