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Rh play, nor to sing, but in such wise that they might enjoy other people’s performance and the noble pictures, statues, and architecture which are the inheritance of the ages. For the rest Doctor Garden had amply provided for the training of any particular talent that one of his girls might develop; these things were obligatory.

In consequence of these theories, incumbent upon their guardian to carry out, Mary, Jane, and Florimel were separated from other girls of their age by the insurmountable barriers of their different education. Nourished as they were upon the great English classics, they knew much that girls of their age had not only never heard of, but which a great many people, unfortunately, miss throughout their lives. They were thoughtful and mature beyond their years because their minds were stored with the best of the poets, yet they were wholly ignorant of the world and knew nothing of what children younger than Florimel pick up from one another. They were more than anxious to be friendly to their contemporaries, and they were liked for their wit, their friendliness, their beauty. But the other Vineclad girls pronounced the Garden girls “queer,” that convenient word, covering