And here for the first time Elsie’s progress had been far greater than Jane’s.  Mr. Hogarth had himself spent a good deal of time in his youth in France; but he had a higher opinion of French society than of French literature, and he thought that from the lips of brilliant Parisian women they would learn more of the spirit of the language and of the people than from the books they studied in classes or read at home.

Elsie had a natural taste for music, and a remarkably sweet voice in speaking, which, if it had been cultivated, would have made her an excellent singer; but her uncle was sure that to indulge her with a musical education would only weaken her mind.  Mr. Hogarth had seen no good come of music.  A taste for singing and a fine voice had been the ruin of thousands—­they had been most mischievous to Elsie’s own father, and they had been the chief fascinations which had won upon his dear sister Mary.  She and George Melville had sung duets together, and from that had been led to try a duet through life; and a very sad and inharmonious life they had made of it.

So poor Elsie’s natural tastes were discouraged and thwarted; and after the positive lessons were over, and her education was said to be finished, she felt vacuity and ennui when Jane rejoiced in full employment.  The housekeeping was ostensibly taken by the sisters in alternate weeks; but though Jane relinquished the keys for the stated period, she never relinquished the superintendence.  She remembered what Elsie forgot; she looked forward where Elsie would have scrambled in the best way she could through the passing hour, and constantly thinking for her and remedying her blunders.  Elsie was apt to forget that any responsibility rested on herself.

Nothing in their singular training was considered odder than that, while they were educated in a more masculine manner than most boys, they were obliged at the same time to make a greater proportion of their own clothes than any girls of their own rank or circumstances, and that they had been carefully and systematically taught to make them in the best manner possible.  The only instructions which they had received from one of their own sex had been given to them by an excellent plain needlewoman, a first-class dressmaker, and a fashionable milliner; and in the last two branches Elsie’s taste had made her excel her sister even more than in French and Italian.

At the time of their uncle’s death, Jane was twenty-three years old, and Elsie two years younger.  They had but very recently given up regular study, for their uncle thought girls were far too soon “finished”, as it is called, and turned out in a very incomplete state of mental and moral development.  He would not let them think themselves educated till they had seen more of the world than could be done in Edinburgh, which was a city he had rather a contempt for, as a mere provincial capital, too superstitious and narrow-minded for his taste.  Paris and London were the schools