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We attended chapel twice a day. Hymns were sung and the Bible read by the Director, who was also a clergyman. My seat happened to be in one of the front pews on the aisle and facing the other half of the school. I was very self-conscious and thought everyone was criticising me. To make matters worse, the gimlet eyes of the two phantoms behind the curtains also seemed to be watching my every movement. My body became rigid and the blood would rush to my face, causing a sensation of faintness. This ordeal I underwent twice a day!

Attendance at chapel could only be escaped by feigning illness and by asking permission to go to the nursery instead. I tried this once only, for I found that it meant a journey through long, lonely corridors where there was the possibility of meeting the two ghost friends on their way to the chapel.

As to ghosts in general, it was indeed thanks to my mother that they could trouble me whenever they happened to be about. It took some years before I was able to dispel at will their disturbing attentions. My nervousness when facing a crowd I have never quite lost. Perhaps intuitively I feel that the demon ever hovering over messed humanity is more active for evil than for good.

St. Catherine's Hall had a decided atmosphere of its own. There, with all its negative qualities, flourished the "genteel American tradition". As it was a survival of an earlier America, I doubt if there now exist other schools like it. Noisy games were not allowed, and raised voices were considered quite out of place. In summer, dressed in the stiff muslins of the period we would walk up and down the green banks of the river. In winter we rarely went out at all; our walks were continued in the long corridors of the school. There seems to have been few restrictive rules; the whole direction of the school was so broadly conceived that for one so young as myself this could almost be taken for freedom. If there was no marked individual care, there certainly was no direct personal antagonism.