'Is there not as good a chance here as in England, papa?'
'What do you mean by "chance," my dear? Opportunity? No; there cannot yet be the same advantages here as in an old country, which has been educating its sons and its daughters in the most perfect way for hundreds of years.'
Esther pricked up her ears. The box of coins recurred to her memory, and sundry conversations held over it with Pitt Dallas. Whereby she had certainly got an impression that it was not so very long since England's educational provisions and practices, for England's daughters at least, had been open to great criticism, and displayed great lack of the desirable. 'Hundreds of years!' But she offered no contradiction to her father's remark.
'I would like you to be equal to any Englishwoman in your acquirements and accomplishments,' he repeated musingly. 'So far as in New York that is possible.'
'I will try what I can do, papa. And, after all, it depends more on the girl than on the school, does it not?'
'Humph! Well, a good deal depends on you, certainly. Did Miss Fairbairn find you backward in your studies, to begin with?'
'Papa,' said Esther slowly, 'I do not think she did.'
'Not in anything?'
'In French and music, of course.'
'Of course! But in history?'