Jacynth sat in the corner of the railway carriage, and looked out at the bustling platform with eyes that were partly frightened, partly bewildered. Today she was to set off for boarding-school, where Auntie, by means of hard work and even harder saving, was managing to send her for the next four years. If she did really well, then she might have a chance of the Thérèse Lepattre Scholarship, and could hope to go on to Oxford and ‘collect a B.A.,’ to quote Auntie. But it would all be very different from anything she had hitherto known. Miss Kendal’s little private school at the end of the long road where they lived had taken only twenty-two girls at its best, and there had been only poor old Miss Kendal and her niece, Miss Doris, to do the teaching. Since Miss Kendal’s death six months ago, Miss Doris had kept the eight or nine girls who had remained at Ivy Lodge going for a time. But she wanted to give it up in any case, and go to join a sister who lived in Wales. So when the time had come, Auntie had said firmly that Jacynth needed much better teaching than she had been getting, and it must be boarding-school.