From the time of our settlement in the capital, I had felt that not nearly enough was being done for the girls and young women of Antanànarìvo, and that there was more than room for another high school for them in the neighbourhood of A-kànga; I had tried hard to persuade the Imèrina district committee to take the same view. The majority of the committee was with me, but such was the opposition from vested interests that the proposal had to be given up. While at home on furlough I had received help from friends for our work, and so on my return I built a small school in the A-kànga churchyard, and began, in a very humble way, a private high school for girls. We and our friends found eighty per cent. of the funds for the school for the first five years. We provided all the material for the sewing-classes there, and at the centres for the village schools, while our eldest daughter devoted herself, as a labour of love, for three years as it proved, to the work of the school. With much covert opposition, condemnation, and with very faint echoes of praise, or encouragement, in the end she made it what it became. The following sketch, written some years later, shows how this work prospered. It was written by Miss Matthews, who for some years superintended the work:-- ‘Almost from the time of my father’s settlement in Antanànarìvo, in 1882, he had the idea that enough was not being done for the girls and young women of Àntanànarìvo, while so much was being done for the boys and the young men. He did not think that two high schools--the London Missionary Society Girls’ Central School and the Friends’ Girls’ High School--were enough for the girls and young women of a city of nearly a hundred thousand inhabitants. The London Missionary Society’s Central School supplied the wants of the centre of the capital, while the Friends’ supplied the needs of the north end of the capital; but there was really no proper provision for the needs of the south end of the capital, or for the west, south-west, and north-west sides of it. ‘When my father was at home on furlough in 1890 some kind friends gave him money to help him with his work, and with that, and a grant of fifty pounds which the directors made him for the purpose, on his return to Madagascar, in 1892, he built a schoolroom in the Ambàtonakànga yard. He soon saw that it would never be what he wished it to be without a European lady in charge of it. In 1894, as the time drew near for my mother’s return to Madagascar, it was arranged that I should return with her to assist her with her sewing-classes. ‘By the time we arrived at Madagascar father had conceived the idea of my taking charge of the girls’ school at Ambàtonakànga, and a few days after we arrived he took me to see it, and said, “There, my dear; there is a school for you to take charge of, and to work up.”