The discipline of the Abbey seems to have been very slack, especially for the big girls. This is how Mary describes it: "The liberty which the first class had was so great that, if we attended our tutor in his study for an hour or two every morning, no human being ever took the trouble to enquire where we spent the rest of the day between our meals. Thus, whether we gossiped in one turret or another, whether we lounged about the garden or out of the window above the gateway, no one so much as said, 'Where have you been, mademoiselle?'"
Mary Butt spent a year at Reading, where she learnt a good deal of French, and not, it would seem, much of anything else. She left it the following Christmas with many tears, thinking that her school-days were over; but a few months later her parents decided to send her back to the Abbey for another year, and that her sister Lucy should go too. That was in the autumn of 1792, when the French Revolution was just beginning. On January 21, 1793, the terrible news came of the murder of the unhappy King, Louis XVI. All Europe, and England especially, were horrified at the cruel deed; and at the Abbey, where there was a strong French Royalist element, feeling ran particularly high. "Monsieur and Madame went into deep mourning, as did also many of the elder girls. Multitudes of the French nobility came thronging into Reading, gathering about the Abbey, and some of them half living within its walls." Our friend Mary, as a half-fledged young lady, saw a great deal of these poor refugees, who had lost everything but their lives. They seem, however, to have shown the true French courage and gaiety under evil circumstances. There was much singing and playing under the trees; and they helped the school-girls to get up some little French plays to act at their breaking-up party. Mary took a part in the character of a French abbess, but she tells us that "assuredly" her talents never lay in the acting line, and very honestly adds: "I could never sufficiently have forgotten myself as to have acted well."
Soon after Mary's finally leaving school her parents decided to put a curate in charge of the Kidderminster living, and to return to "lovely Stanford." This was a great relief to poor, shy Mrs. Butt, who had been like a caged bird in Kidderminster; but the young people were not quite sure if they liked the change. They had made many friends in the town and its neighbourhood; and now that Mary was, as we say nowadays, "come out," she had been taken to various balls and other diversions. They soon, however, settled down again in the old home; and as there was a large, delightful, and very friendly family at Stanford Court hard by, they found plenty of variety and amusement even in the depths of the country.