A Bunch of Cherries by L.T. Meade

The day of the Cherry Feast dawned bright and glorious. The girls awoke in the early morning of that splendid summer day, feeling that something very delightful was about to happen. One after another they peeped out and saw the sun on the grass and heard the birds sing and felt the soft zephyrs of the summer breeze blowing on their cheeks. Then they returned back again to their different little beds in their different dormitories, and remarked with intense satisfaction that the long wished-for day had come, and that to-morrow they were all going home -- home for the holidays. Could anything be more fascinating, stimulating, and delightful? And each girl hoped to go back again to the beloved home with honor, for Mrs. Clavering had a wonderful way with her pupils, a very stimulating way, and she so arranged her prizes and her certificates that no girl who had really worked, who had really taken pains, was excluded from distinction. It was only the hopelessly idle, the hopelessly disobedient, who could leave Cherry Court School without some token of its mistress's sympathy, regard, and encouragement.

Kitty Sharston was too new a scholar to expect to get any reward in the ordinary sense of this term, but, all the same, she had worked fairly well, and during the last three weeks had tackled her studies and regulated her conduct like a veritable little Trojan. Every moment of Kitty's day was now marked out. There was never an instant that she was off guard with regard to herself; there was no time left in her busy life for reckless speeches and reckless deeds. The goal set before her was such a high one, the motive to struggle for pre-eminence was so strong, that Kitty was quite carried along by the current. Her natural keen intelligence stood her in good stead, her marks for punctuality, for neatness, for early rising were all good, and she had little, very little fear of the results of this afternoon's brief examination.