When one has passed fifty, four years—provided no one of them brings severe illness or great sorrow—make little if any difference in outward appearance. Time is usually kind to the middle-aged, and it is only when we reach middle-age ourselves, and the dear old landmarks are removed one by one, that we realise how much we unconsciously depended on this stability of appearance, this changelessness in those who helped to shape our destiny. Thus if there was little change in Mrs. Dew and Mr. Wycherly four years after Jane-Anne had flooded the Holywell cellar with beer, Jane-Anne herself and the boys looked back upon the children of that time with a kind of affectionate scorn. Montagu was now taller than Mr. Wycherly, thin-faced and analytic as ever, only waiting for the following October to take up his scholarship at New College. Edmund was on the _Britannia_, all uniform and gold buttons, naval phrases, and nonsense. When he appeared for his "leaves" (he scorned to call it holidays) he imported so much liveliness and laughter, to say nothing of visitors from the outer world, into the quiet household that during these hilarious weeks Jane-Anne forgot to be earnest. For Jane-Anne was very earnest. Four years of school-life had wrought great changes in Jane-Anne. For one thing, no one any longer had to worry about her lungs. Crepitations were things of the past. She was strong as a Shetland pony with fully as much endurance. There was nothing in her physique to prevent her becoming a most efficient housemaid. Moreover, she was tall enough for even the most exacting situation. But even Mrs. Dew had ceased to include that idea among practical politics. For Jane-Anne had turned out "clever at her books" beyond all expectation. She went first of all to a nice school over Magdalen Bridge, but she got on so fast and was so unusually receptive a pupil that the head mistress herself called upon Mr. Wycherly and suggested that Jane-Anne should go on to the High School. Mr. Wycherly consulted Lord Dursley, who still continued to take a vicarious sort of interest in the child, and the matter was arranged without much difficulty. Here Jane-Anne fell under the influence of Miss Willows and became strenuous and earnest to the last degree. Miss Willows taught the top form, and she did more than teach it, she moulded it. She was twenty-eight years old and was fully determined to be a head mistress herself before many years had passed. She was of the stuff head mistresses are made and she was modern of the moderns. She was tall and strong and handsome, good at games and a first in classics, and hers was indeed the doctrine of perfection. "Don’t only try to do things as well as other people," she would say; "try to do them a little better. Never be content with mediocrity."