In spite of this comical exception, the general system of education followed in Hans Place was greatly superior to that of the ordinary boarding schools of the day, where all that could be said of a young lady when her education was finished was that she “played a little, sang a little, talked a little indifferent French, painted shells and roses, not particularly like nature, danced admirably, and was the best player at battledore and shuttle-cock, hunt-the-slipper and blindman’s-buff in her county.” Dr. and Mrs. Mitford visited their little daughter frequently during the period of her school life—often taking lodgings in the neighbourhood to be within easy reach. Mrs. Mitford writes on one of these occasions to her husband: “=Mezza=” (a pet name for Mary), “who has got her little desk here, and her great dictionary, is hard at her studies beside me.... Her little spirits are all abroad to obtain the prize, sometimes hoping, sometimes desponding. It is as well perhaps you are not here at present, as you would be in as great a fidget on the occasion as she herself is.” Whether Mary won this particular prize we do not know, but that she _did_ win prizes is proved by the fact that two of them are carefully treasured by the descendants of some of her friends. One of these is in our temporary possession. It is a large volume entitled, _Adam’s Geography_, bound in calf, and ornamented with elegant patterns in gilding. On the upper side of the binding are the words:— Prix de Bonne Conduite qu’a obtenu Mlle. Midford while on the reverse side we read:— Mrs. St. Quintin’s School Hans Place June 17th 1801. The Mitfords’ name used to be spelt with a “d” at one time, but Dr. Mitford changed it to a “t” a few years later than the period of which we are writing. There were three vacations in the year, the breaking up for which was always preceded by a festival. Before Easter and Christmas there was usually a ballet “when the sides of the schoolroom were fitted up with bowers, in which the little girls who had to dance were seated, and whence they issued at a signal from M. Duval the dancing master, attired as sylphs or shepherdesses, to skip or glide through the mazy movements of a fancy dance to the music of his kit. Or sometimes there would be a dramatic performance, as when the same room was converted into a theatre for the representation of Hannah More’s _Search after Happiness_. CHAPTER X A GLIMPSE OF OLD FRENCH SOCIETY During her school life Mary Mitford had an opportunity of seeing many of the French refugees of noble birth who had escaped from their country in the commencement of the Reign of Terror. “M. St. Quintin,” she tells us, “being a lively, kind-hearted man, with a liberal hand and a social temper, it was his delight to assemble as many as he could of his poor countrymen and countrywomen around his hospitable supper-table.”