aid 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 for men, and therefore, according to
his notions, for women also; but when the time arrived for the tour on
the Continent and the winter in London, which had been promised to the
girls, he felt his health had given way, though he had no positive
illness, and delayed leaving home till the following year, when he
hoped to be able to enjoy it, and to show all he meant to show to the
girls without fatigue or indifference. If he had been able to go with
them on the previous year, as had been arranged, he would probably have
left his fortune otherwise, for Mr. Dalzell's attentions had only been
of recent date.

As the news of the will spread, every one said they really ought to