The first edition of this book is dated 1900. The edition used is dated 1905. The publisher was The Religious Tract Society, London. The number of pages is 253.

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General information

I have used part of the same introduction for this book, as I did for one of the books about Pixie O’Shaughnessy, not because the books are anything like the same, but because the observations are equally valid.

This is another excellent book by Mrs. de Horne Vaizey, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. While of course it is dated in its references to the world around its actors, yet nevertheless their emotions are well-described, and no doubt are timeless.

Some older children are being educated at a Vicarage near Brighton, along with the vicar’s own three. Peggy Saville is a “new girl”, having previously lived in India, where her parents still are. She has great talent in some directions, but still has to add up by counting on her fingers! She certainly gets up to some tricks, though.

There is a fire at a dance given by the titled family of one of the pupils, from which Peggy rescues the daughter of the house. Both girls are injured, Peggy the more severely, but eventually they are both on the way to recovery.

In some ways the world around the people in the book is recognisable today, in a way which a book written thirty or forty years before would not have been. They have electricity, telephones, trains, buses, and many other things that we still use regularly today. Of course one major difference is that few people today have servants, while middle-class and upper-class families of the eighteen nineties would certainly have had them.

So it is not so very dated after all. But I do think there is a real value in reading the book. Oddly enough, I think that a boy would benefit from reading any of the author’s books, more than a girl would, because it would give him an insight into the girlish mind which he could not so easily otherwise obtain.

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Contents

Chapter I.
A New Inmate.

Chapter II.
Mellicent’s Prophecy.

Chapter III.
Enter Miss Saville!

Chapter IV.
Good-Bye, Mariquita!

Chapter V.
Explanations.

Chapter VI.
A New Friendship.

Chapter VII.
Amateur Photographers.

Chapter VIII.
Peggy shows herself in her True Colours.

Chapter IX.
The Honourable Rosalind.

Chapter X.
Ambitions!

Chapter XI.
A Shakespeare Reading.

Chapter XII.
Peggy in Trouble.

Chapter XIII.
Jealous Thoughts.

Chapter XIV.
Rosalind’s Visit.

Chapter XV.
A Pink Luncheon.

Chapter XVI.
An Unexpected Visitor.

Chapter XVII.
Peggy is lost.

Chapter XVIII.
The Secret Confessed.

Chapter XIX.
Rosalind’s Ball.

Chapter XX.
At the Larches.

Chapter XXI.
Another Accident!

Chapter XXII.
Fire!

Chapter XXIII.
A Night of Terror.

Chapter XXIV.
The Valley of the Shadow.

Chapter XXV.
Convalescence.

Chapter XXVI.
Alas, for Arthur!

Chapter XXVII.
The Parting of the Ways!

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