The next morning Claire was introduced to the scene of her new labours, and was agreeably impressed with its outside appearance. Saint Cuthbert's High School was situated in a handsome thoroughfare, and had originally been a large private house, to which long wings had been added to right and left. On each side and across the road were handsome private houses standing in their own grounds, owned by tenants who regarded the High School with lively detestation, and would have borne up with equanimity had an earthquake swallowed it root and branch. Viewed from inside, the building was less attractive, passages and class-rooms alike having the air of bleak austerity which seems inseparable from such buildings; but when nine o'clock struck, and the flood of young life went trooping up the stairways and flowed into the separate rooms, the sense of bareness was replaced by one of tingling vitality. As is usual on an opening day, every girl was at her best and brightest, decked in a new blouse, with pigtails fastened by crisp new ribbons, and good resolutions wound up to fever point. To find a new French mistress in the shape of a pretty well-dressed girl, who was English at one moment, and at the next even Frenchier than Mademoiselle, was an unexpected joy, and Claire found the battery of admiring young eyes an embarrassing if stimulating experience. Following Miss Farnborough's advice, she spent the first day's lessons in questioning the different classes as to their past work, and so turned the hour into an impromptu conversation class. The ugly English accents made her wince, and she winced a second time as she realised the unpleasant fact that just as her pupils would have to prepare for her, so would she be obliged to prepare for them! Forgotten rules of grammar must be looked up and memorised, for French was so much her mother tongue that she would find it difficult to explain distinctions which came as a matter of course. That meant more work at night, more infringement of holiday hours. The girls themselves were for the most part agreeable and well-mannered. The majority were the daughters of professional men, and of gentle- folks of limited means; but there was also a sprinkling of the daughters of better-class artisans, who paid High School fees at a cost of much self-denial in order to train their girls for teachers' posts in the future. Here and there an awkward, badly-dressed child was plainly of a still lower class. These were the free "places"--clever children who had obtained scholarships from primary schools, and were undergoing the ordeal of being snubbed by their new school-mates as a consequence of their success. From the teacher's point of view these clever children were a welcome stimulus, but class feeling is still too strong in England to make them acceptable to their companions.