“At the fashionable boarding-school of Madame Finesse, and I can assure you no expense has been spared in her education.”
“I dare say not: these new-fangled establishments for the manufacture of man-traps, don’t usually spare expense. How old is your intended wife?”
“Just nineteen.”
“Where has she lived since she left school, for I suppose she was ‘finished,’ as they style it, some years since?”
“She has resided lately at the Astor House, under the protection of a relative who boards there.”
“Then she cannot know much about housekeeping.”
“I dare say not,” replied Charles, with a slight feeling of vexation, “but all that knowledge comes by practice, uncle.”
“If her time has been divided between a boarding school and a hotel, where is she to learn any thing about it?”
“Oh, women seem to have an intuitive knowledge of such things.”
“You are mistaken, boy,” said the old man, “if a girl has been brought up in a good home, and sees a regular system of housekeeping constantly pursued, she will become unconsciously familiar with its details, even though she may not then put such knowledge in practice; the consequence will be that when she is the mistress of a house, her memory will assist her judgment—a quality, by the way, not too common in girls of nineteen. But how is a poor thing who has seen nothing but the skimble-skamble of a school-household or the clockwork regularity of a great hotel, to know any of the machinery by which the comfort of a home is obtained and secured?”