Betty, to her disgust and mortification, was placed in a lower class altogether.  She had not expected to be with Kitty, but she certainly had not expected to be placed below Anna, and the blow was a great one.  “But I’ll—­I’ll beat her,” declared Betty hotly.  “I will.  I don’t believe she is so awfully, awfully clever as they say, and nobody knows but what I may be clever too, only people haven’t noticed it yet.  I am sure I feel as if I might be.”

It was unfortunate, though, for the Trenire girls that Mrs. Pike had settled all the arrangements for their going to “Hillside;” it was unfortunate for them too that Miss Richards and Miss Melinda placed unquestioning reliance on what was told them, and had no powers of observation of their own, or failed to use them, for it meant to them that they started unfairly handicapped.  Miss Richards was warned that she would find Dr. Trenire’s daughters backward and badly taught, and entirely unused to discipline or control.  “Of course the poor dear doctor had not been able to give them all the attention they needed, and he was such a gentle, kind father, perhaps too kind and gentle, which made it rather trying for others.  It was to be hoped that dear Miss Richards would not find the children too trying.  She must be very strict with them; it would, of course, be for their own good eventually.”  “Dear Miss Richards” felt quite sure of that, and had no doubt that she would be able to manage them.  She had had much success with girls.  She was glad, though, to be warned that there was need of special care—­in fact, dear Lady Kitson had hinted at very much the same thing.

So the paths of Katherine and Elizabeth were strewn with thorns and stumbling-blocks from the outset, and, unfortunately, they were not the girls to see and avoid them, or even guess they were there until they fell over them.

Anna, having been brought up under her mother’s eye, was, of course, quite, quite different; Anna was really a credit to the care which had been lavished on her.  Miss Richards and Miss Melinda did not doubt it; they declared that it was evident at the first glance, and acted accordingly.  Which was, no doubt, pleasant for Anna, but, on the whole, turned out in the end worse for her than for her cousins.

Anna certainly had been well trained in one respect—­she could learn her home lessons and prepare her home work under any conditions, it seemed, and she always did them well.  Kitty had an idea, a very foolish one, of course, that she could only work when alone and quiet, say in her bedroom, or in the barn, or lying in the grass in the garden, or in the woods.  All of which was inelegant, unladylike, and nonsensical.  Kitty must get the better of such ideas at once, and must learn her lessons as Anna did, sitting primly at the square table in the playroom.

Anna learnt her lessons by repeating them half aloud, and making a hissing noise through her teeth all the time.  The sound alone drove Kitty nearly distracted, while the sitting up so primly to the table seemed to destroy all her interest in the lesson and her power of concentrating her mind on the study in hand.