And as Mrs Carbonel had prevailed on the new gardener's wife to have her baby vaccinated, and George Hewlett's and Mrs Mole's children had been thence treated by her own hands, this was believed the more, although none of the children were visibly the worse for it after the first few days; but some of the women, and almost all the children believed the story, and many of the little ones were in fits of terror about the school, so that there was a falling off even with the Sunday School. The new school was only an additional room to a good-sized cottage, with a couple of windows and a brick floor, fitted with forms without backs, but which had at least good firm legs to stand upon, pegs for the cloaks and head-gear round the walls, and a single desk, likely to be quite sufficient for the superior few who were to learn writing and summing. The stock, obtained from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, consisted of a dozen copies of Mrs Trimmer's Abridgment of the Old Testament, the same number of the lady's work on the New Testament, a packet of little paper books of the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables and the Miracles, and another packet of little books, where the alphabet led the way upwards from ba, bo, etcetera, to "Our cat can kill a rat; can she not?" Also the broken Catechism, and Sellon's Abridgment of instruction on the Catechism. There were a housewife full of needles, some brass thimbles, and a roll of calico provided, and this was the apparatus with which most village schools would commence. Mrs Thorpe arrived with her two little girls, the neatest of creatures, still wearing her weeds, as indeed widows engaged in any business used to do for life as a sort of protection. Under her crape borders showed the smoothest of hair, and her apron was spotlessly white. The two little girls were patterns, with short cut hair, spotted blue frocks and checkered pinafores in the week, lilac frocks on Sundays; white capes on that same day, and bonnets of coarse straw, tied down with green ribbon, over little bonnet caps with plain net frilling, the only attempt at luxury apparent in their dress. Their names were Jane and Mary, and they looked very pretty and demure, though there was a little mischief in Mary's eyes. Nothing could look nicer or more promising in the eyes of the sisters when they took her to her cottage, nor could any one be better pleased than she to work under her own young ladies, and to have so peaceful a home for her little daughters. She was introduced to her future scholars on Sunday in the wash-house, and very shy and awkward did they look, nor were the numbers as large as usual.