Brookdale Author:Kate Chamberlin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. "Miss Bransey's finishing-establishment for young ladies," to quote the very conspicuous brass plate on the front door, would never have been reco... more »gnized by a Board School inspector, its claim to notice chiefly consisting in the extreme gentility of the young people who attended it. However deficient in ability the teachers might be, at least they were highly connected. It was a pleasant school of the old style, where the girls learnt little, talked much, and dawdled delightfully. Lessons began late and ended early, half-holidays were granted on any pretext, or on none at all if no possible reason could be thought of, and the girls were allowed unlimited extravagance in sweet-stuff and Berlin wool—those two delights of the school-girl mind. Miss Bransey, a highly aris- tocratic-looking lady, mild and soft of speech, but most majestic in appearance and manners, had resided in the earlier part of her life at Haring Towers, the princely residence of the noble Duke of Haring and Codd. Here she had held the position of governess to the Lady Alwina Gilderoy, a fact which neither she nor her subsequent pupils were ever likely to forget. The Lady Alwina was the patron saint of the school, and often invoked—especially by Miss Lister, the junior English governess, a stout little person with sleepy eyes and a great faculty for indolence. On a summer afternoon she would write a small note, elegantly turn down the corners, and request one of her pupils to convey it to Miss Winter, the " Senior English." " Dear Miss Winter, " It's too hot for lessons. Here's Bransey coming. Can't you do something to bring up the Lady Alwina ?" Miss Winter, though she knew the history of the Lady Alwina as well as she did theHistory of England, would decide for the former, shut up 'The ...« less