She first showed a sense of her
deprivation--for it was a deprivation for a rich man's daughter--when
she finished at the dame-school and we boys entered college. Then she
hinted, very cautiously, that her and Fanny's education was being
neglected, and mentioned certain other New York gentlemen's daughters,
who had been sent to England to boarding-schools.
Delicately as she did this, the thought that his favourite child could
harbour a wish that involved going to England, was a blow to Mr.
Faringfield. He hastened to remove all cause of complaint on the score
of defective education. He arranged that the music teacher, who gave
the girls their lessons in singing and in playing upon the harpsichord
and guitar, should teach them four days a week instead of two. He
engaged Mr. Cornelius to become an inmate of his house and to give
them tuition out of his regular school hours. He paid a French widow
to instruct them in their pronunciation, their book-French and grammar
being acquired under Mr. Cornelius's teaching. And so, poor girls,
they got only additional work for Margaret's pains. But both of them
were docile, Fanny because it was her nature to be so, Margaret
because she had taken it into her head to become an accomplished lady.
We never guessed her dreams and ambitions in those years, and to this
day I often wonder at what hour in her girlhood the set design took
possession of her, that design which dominated all her actions when we
so little guessed its existence.
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