To the children at first this was all delightfully new. The house was bigger, the rooms higher, and altogether it was wonderfully strange. Hot water upstairs and down was a tremendous luxury, and a bath into which Maggie and Deborah could both get together, and still leave room for Elinor if she had also a mind to come, seemed really too miraculously funny for words. But when you looked outside it was not so inviting. To be sure there were trees in the garden opposite, and very pretty gardens and trees belonging to the houses at the back, but there was nothing loose, nor wild, nor natural about them. They hadn’t breathed the scent of air blown off the Fells, nor drunk of the rain whose clouds had blown across the Cumbrian Mountains. No, they were simply city trees and city grass, and gave one a feeling of unrest and unhappiness one could scarcely understand, for at the time you didn’t understand that you were comparing them with a fuller, freer growth far away. And here there was no interesting servant to impress them with her conversation. And no milk, nor porridge, nor fowls, nor chickens, nor anything that there had been before. The old grey cat had been given away, and only the best of the furniture transplanted. So that at the bottom there was something distinctly sad about this new home. However, they settled down, and after a time things looked a bit more ship-shape. Then came the vital question—Where were the children to go to school? Opposite their house was a semi-detached villa in which lived three ladies who conducted a private school. It was eminently respectable, indeed select, and just the place for the three younger girls to be sent to. About five minutes’ walk away was a large church school, very respectable and in good working order, and also well conducted, but still supplying only elementary education. Marion determined they should go to the former. Their father, for once, was resolved they should attend the latter. It was a very uncomfortable time. “They will grow into little common vulgar things,” said she. “They will get a sound education,” said he. But that had no attraction for her—perhaps she did not quite understand the phrase. So matters went on, and after a terrible deal of argument the children went to the elementary school. Their father took them himself, and Elinor confidently, though privately, affirmed afterwards that the schoolmistress fell in love with him, though on what grounds it would be hard to say. Elinor loved to circulate stories like this—it added zest to life. This precocious young lady had previously gathered Maggie and Deborah together and admonished them. “Now you’re not to speak to any of the children at this new school we’re going to. They’re very common, and if you talk to them you’ll grow as common as they. Now do you hear, Maggie? You’re to make no friends at all.” “All right,” said Maggie. “Aren’t we to speak to them if they speak to us?” piped Deborah.