Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School

There is no disguising the fact that Eustacia Benson was the most arrant little prig that ever existed. She was not so much to blame for it as was her upbringing. Her father had been a learned professor of Greek, who had married a lady doctor, neither of them being very young. Both had great theories on how to bring up children, and to these they subjected their only child, the unfortunate Eustacia—so called because of the meaning of the name in Greek, ‘rich in corn,’ which the professor interpreted as ‘rich in knowledge.’ We have little difficulty in guessing the effect of those theories when we meet Eustacia for the first time one day in November, sitting in the drawing-room at her Aunt Margery’s, looking round it with a superior air, and mentally deciding how she would rearrange the room, should it be given over to her.