Witch Hill College takes pride in its adherence to the old fashioned methods of teaching. Its board of management uses this as a selling point—old ways are best, and so forth—and there is certainly no shortage of financially stable, traditional minded parents who view the place as the ideal establishment to which to send their daughters for further education.Discipline is the order of the day in Witch Hill. After all, a young lady of eighteen or nineteen needs discipline in her life in order to embrace the ways of the modern world and to ultimately achieve success in life.However, when Mary first arrives at the college, little does she expect that the discipline they refer to so openly is akin to the regime of corporal discipline one might expect to encounter in old English institutions up until the mid-twentieth century: the discipline of the cane, strap, and paddle. Ill-informed is ill prepared, but what could prepare a hitherto sheltered rich girl for what awaited her on her very first day in her new class?