allow you to retain your scholarship.  In so doing they are perfectly within their rights.  They did not undertake to grant free tuition to the candidate who scored the highest number of marks, but to the one who, in their opinion, was most likely to benefit by the school course.  It was a matter to be settled entirely at their discretion.  I have carefully re-read your papers, and compared them with your form record, and I come to the conclusion that you are backward and ill-instructed in many subjects, but that you are not idle or stupid.  I shall make arrangements for you to have special coaching in mathematics, Latin and chemistry until you can keep up with the rest of the Form.  I find your reports for history and English literature are good, which confirms my opinion that you do not lack ability.  You will need to work very hard, especially at those subjects in which you are so deficient, but I trust you will soon show a marked improvement, and thus justify the decision of the Governors.  Are you prepared to try?”

“I don’t know how to thank you—­I’ll do my very best!” stammered Winona, quite overcome by this unexpected denouement.

“Then that is all that need be said.  Miss Lever will take you every day from 3.30 to 4.15 for private tuition.  Mark that on your time-table, and go to her this afternoon in the Preparatory Room.  You may tell Miss Garside that I am disengaged now, and at liberty to speak to her.”

Winona left the study with very different feelings from those with which she had entered.  Her spirits were so high that she wanted to dance along the corridor.  She could hardly believe her good fortune.  Those great and important gentlemen, the Governors, had actually approved of her essay to the extent of allowing it to stand as her qualification for the Scholarship!  She blessed Lady Jane Grey, and Edgar Allan Poe, and Browning, and Andre de Chenier, and the happy chance that had made her combine them all.  She was glad she had paid that visit to Hampton Court, and that she had seen Lady Jane Grey’s portrait, and had been able to describe both.  Life was going to be a very exhilarating business, now her position in the school was once more secure.

“I’ll show them how I can work,” she thought.  “They shan’t be sorry that they let me stay after all!  Oh, I am in luck!  Yes, I’m the luckiest girl in the school!”

CHAPTER VII

An Autumn Foray

Winona felt that she now started life at the High School on an entirely new basis.  Miss Bishop and Miss Huntley understood her limitations and judged her accordingly.  It was not by any means that they lowered their standard, but that they appreciated her difficulty in keeping up with the Form and gave her credit for her hard work.  And hard work it undoubtedly was.  She would get up early in the morning to revise her lessons before breakfast, and would sit toiling over books and exercises in the