Ashcroft was a very small village, and the school was a mixed one. On Sunday two classes of boys, under charge of the clergyman, Mr Murray, and Miss Hardman, occupied one side of the room. The day-school mistress taught the younger girls at the other; and under the pretty latticed window on a square of forms sat the elder ones. They were a flaxen-haired, rosy-faced set of children, simple and rather stolid-looking, among whom Wyn Warren, Grace Elton, and others of the head servants' children were decidedly the superiors. As Florence and Grace came up to their class, a girl in a straight white frock, with a red sash and a large straw hat, came and sat down on the teacher's chair. "Miss Geraldine'll take us," whispered the girls, as they stood up and curtseyed; "Mrs Murray's got a cold." The kind-faced, white-haired old clergyman read the prayer, and then the first class began to repeat fluently, but with an accent that Florence could hardly follow, a surprising number of lessons. "Can you say your collect?" said Miss Geraldine to Florence. "No, teacher. We don't learn lessons at home--we've no time for it," said Florence. "You can learn it for next week," said Miss Geraldine, with a calmness that astonished Florence as much as the other girls were amazed at hearing Miss Geraldine called "teacher." But there was something in the unconscious composure of this slip of a girl, who looked as if she had never been disobeyed in her life, and did not know what a struggle to keep order meant, that impressed Florence with a curious sense of fellow-feeling. "She's got a spirit of her own," she thought; but Geraldine was only secure of her position and unquestioned in her relation to the girls she was teaching. "Yes, teacher; and I'll look over a hymn too if you like, teacher," said Florence with alacrity. "A psalm. Grace Elton will show you." When the lessons were over the young lady asked questions on them in a clear, steady little voice, which were nicely answered by the girls, and then proceeded to hear the Catechism, and, thinking to be polite to the new-comer and give her an easy piece, asked her her name, to begin with. Florence was not accustomed to say lessons standing up, nor to say the Catechism at all, and at the first attempt to repeat her long name she went off into a hopeless giggle, and stuffed her pocket-handkerchief into her mouth. Some of the other girls giggled also. Miss Geraldine's dark eyes gave a little flash. "When you have done laughing, Florence, I'll ask you again. Grace, go on." Florence did not know the next answer that came to her turn, and it soon became apparent that a great girl of fifteen could not say her Catechism--a fact common enough at Rapley, but unknown at Ashcroft.