6 THE NEW RECRUITS 



for they will be taught obedience, orderliness, and 

 much worldly wisdom. They will go away, after 

 their two years here, stronger, more capable, 

 happier women, and out in the world they will be 

 able in all honesty to say that much of this they owe 

 to the teaching they have had, both in play and 

 work time, upon the chalk slope beneath one of 

 the beacons of our English Downs. Here they have 

 not only been told to treat plants tenderly, like 

 human beings, but they have also learnt to do 

 their duty by one another and, as an Englishman 

 would perhaps express it, " to play the game." 

 Such lessons are readily acquired when they come 

 from a woman who, though she has risen to leader- 

 ship, has herself been a student and gone through 

 the same vicissitudes. 



Again a swish of many wings overhead, wheeling 

 from side to side, in regimental order similar to 

 the cavalry charges that our newspapers have 

 recently been full of; and then the stillness is 

 faintly broken by the sound of distant, quiet young 

 voices . It is a sign that the conclave in the students ' 

 office has ended, and each one has been sent about 

 her work. 



When I walk towards the house between the 

 tall ghosts of hollyhocks and achillea that remain 

 to call back summer glories, I catch occasional 

 glimpses of the new-comers who have lately joined 

 our garden life. One or two are rosy-cheeked and 

 as bonny-looking as the great, round, red apples 

 that hang upon our many young trees ; others are 

 slender, pale, perhaps inert. At present the new 

 students are easily distinguished, for they have 



