Its steady rippling murmur never stopped, and could be heard day and night through the ever-open windows, gentle and subdued in dry weather, but rising to a roar when rain in the hills brought the flood down in a turbulent torrent.
Through lessons, play, or dreams this sound of many waters was ever present; it gave an atmosphere to the school which, if passed unnoticed through extreme familiarity, would have been instantly missed if it could have stopped.

To the girls this stream was a kind of guardian deity, with the glade for its sacred grove.

They loved every rock and stone and cataract, almost every patch of brown moss upon its boulders.
Each morning of the summer term they bathed before breakfast in the pool where a big oak-tree shaded the cataract.

It was so close to the house that they could run out in mackintoshes, and so retired that it resembled a private swimming-bath.

Here they enjoyed themselves like water-nymphs, splashing in the shallows, plunging in the pool, swinging from the boughs of the oak-tree, and scrambling over the lichened boulders.