A certain number of the soldiers of the regiment were allowed to bring their wives and children out with them. There were no Government schools then for the regimental children, so that these little people idled away their time round the barracks, and were as ignorant as the day they were born. It came into Mrs. Sherwood's head to start a school for them, and this school she herself taught for four hours every morning, except in the very hottest weather; and the only help she had was from a sergeant of the regiment, a kind, good man. Some of the officers also were very thankful to send their children to school, so that Mrs. Sherwood soon had as many as fifty boys and girls coming daily to her bungalow. Very hard work it was teaching them to read and write and to be gentle, truthful, and obedient. She found the officers' children generally more troublesome than the soldiers', because they were more spoilt, or, as she puts it, pampered and indulged. For these children she wrote many of her books, especially her _Stories on the Church Catechism_, which can still be bought, and which give a very interesting picture of the life of a soldier's child in India some eighty years ago. Besides her day-school, Mrs. Sherwood collected in her house several little orphans, the children of poor soldiers' wives who quickly died in the trying climate of India. She found some of these children being dreadfully neglected and half starved, so took them home to her and brought them up with her own children. She gives an amusing description of her home life in India during the hot season, so terribly trying to Europeans: "The mode of existence of an English family during the hot winds in India is so very unlike anything in Europe that I must not omit to describe it. Every outer door of the house and every window is closed; all the interior doors and venetians are, however, open, whilst most of the private apartments are shut in by drop-curtains or screens of grass, looking like fine wire-work, partially covered with green silk. The hall, which never has any other than borrowed lights in any bungalow, is always in the centre of the house, and ours at Cawnpore had a large room on each side of it, with baths and sleeping-rooms. In the hot winds I always sat in the hall at Cawnpore. Though I was that year without a baby of my own, I had my orphan, my little Annie, always by me, quietly occupying herself when not actually receiving instruction from me. I had given her a good-sized box, painted green, with a lock and key; she had a little chair and table.