an talk to you without being tripped up
at an incorrect date, or an inaccurate scientific or historical fact.
You can warrant yourself safe to let me blunder on?"

"Is it not very good of the young ladies to set you right if you are
wrong, and if they are able to do so?"

"It may be very good for me, but it is not at all agreeable. I cannot
help wondering very much at the industry and perseverance that young
ladies show in becoming so very accomplished. I am sure that many a
lady spends as much time and energy in learning music as would,
directed otherwise, realize a fortune in Australia."

"Yes, many men in Australia have got rich with very little toil," said
Elsie; "but women cannot make fortunes either here or there, I suppose."

"So they content themselves with making a noise," said Mr. Brandon. "I
like some music, Miss Melville; but not the brilliant style. It shows
wonderful powers of manual dexterity, but it does not please me."

"My sister says, she wonders why so many women spend so much time over
the one art in which they have shown their deficiency--that is, music."

"Their deficiency? I think they show their proficiency, only that I do
not care about it; that is probably my fault, and not theirs."

"But Jane says, that as so many thousands--and even millions--of women
are taught music, and not one has been anything but a fourth-rate
composer, it shows a natural incapacity for the highest branch of the
art. In poetry and painting, where the cultivation is far rarer,
greater excellence has been attained by many women. Their inferiority
is certainly not so marked as in music."

"That is rather striking, Miss Melville; but I did not expect such an
admission from such a quarter. I see you are not strong-minded My aunt,
Mrs. Rutherford, and her daughters, have rather been boring me with
their theory of the equality of the sexes: this is a first-rate
argument. Will you take it very much amiss if I borrow your idea, or
rather your sister's, without acknowledgement? I have felt so very
small, because they were always bringing up some instance or other out
of books which I had never read, that to bring forward something as
good as this, might make them have a better opinion of me."

"I am sure neither Jane nor I would care about the appropriation of the
idea, though it seems rather treacherous to put ours into our enemy's
hands."

"Your enemy's!--that is hard language for me. I trusted to your being
friendl