The Girls of St. Wode's by L.T. Meade — Read

Belle Acheson was an ideal scholarly girl of the latter end of the nineteenth century. She wore spectacles, not pince-nez. Her hair was parted smoothly on her forehead and done up in a tiny knot or dab at the back of her neck. Her forehead was high, her complexion sallow, her eyes short-sighted and small. She had a long upper lip, and her mouth was thin and wide. In figure she was extremely spare, her feet and hands were large, and her shoulders angular. She was a plain girl, and she gloried in the fact. Belle Acheson lived altogether for the joys of intellect; to learn was her delight. The more abstruse, the more dry, the science, the more eagerly did Belle absorb it, and make it part of herself. She was a good classical scholar, and was also fond of modern languages. She studied Shakespeare, not for his beauty of language, but for his archaisms. She adored musty professors, and never had a good word to say for an athletic man. Her ambition was to carry off double-firsts, and some people thought that she had a fair chance of obtaining this blue ribbon.

Belle was an inmate of St. Wode's College, Wingfield. There were four halls of residence at St. Wode's, and Belle occupied an attic in North Hall. She had been there now for three terms, and had already made a profound impression on her tutors. She amassed knowledge with great rapidity. No nut was too hard for her to crack.