124 WORK UNDER GLASS 



students are summoned, not to a burial, but to 

 attendance whilst reproof is administered for this 

 lack of care. The instant the first peal rings out, 

 all drop their tools and hurriedly, breathlessly 

 come running up the hill to the students' office. 

 If the offence is one of gross carelessness and means 

 the loss of a considerable sum, a fine is levied and 

 all subscribe to it. Perhaps freesia bulbs, that 

 were placed on a warm shelf, so that they should 

 get thoroughly dry, have had water spilled over 

 them by mistake and will consequently become 

 rotten, or else melon plants, that were to grow into 

 finely developed bearers of good fruit, have been 

 allowed to get bone-dry so that red spider has 

 shown itself on their leaves. All such acts of 

 indifference or forgetfulness, where they affect the 

 welfare of plants, must be punished, and the only 

 thorough way of doing so is by making each 

 member of the community feel individually affected 

 by the mischief that has been done. Upon rare 

 occasions, when it is difficult to bring home suffi- 

 ciently a sense of due penitence, the Captain has 

 recourse to extreme measures. In single file the 

 students follow her through the golden bushes of 

 broom over the narrow drawbridge on to the roof- 

 garden. On that flat expanse with its small sur- 

 rounding wall, amidst circles and squares of flowers 

 where tubs and pottery oil-jars gay with fuchsias 

 and geraniums stand in patterns after the Italian 

 fashion, the young gardeners surround their leader, 

 looking like children awaiting the reproof of a 

 parent. An appeal is then made to their sense of 

 duty ; in moving words they are told that, since 



