rls when they are babies
grow up together, but with the schooldays comes a division. All the
boys go to school at the monastery without the walls, and there learn in
noisy fashion their arithmetic, letters, and other useful knowledge. But
little girls have nowhere to go. They cannot go to the monasteries,
these are for boys alone, and the nunneries are very scarce. For twenty
monasteries there is not one nunnery. Women do not seem to care to learn
to become nuns as men do to become monks. Why this is so I cannot tell,
but there is no doubt of the fact. And so there are no schools for girls
as there are for boys, and consequently the girls are not well educated
as a rule. In great towns there are, of course, regular schools for
girls, generally for girls and boys together; but in the villages these
very seldom exist. The girls may learn from their mothers how to read
and write, but most of them cannot do so. It is an exception in country
places to find a girl who can read, as it is to find a boy who cannot.
If there were more nunneries, there would be more education among the
women; here is cause and effect. But there are not, so the little girls
work instead. While their brothers are in the monasteries, the girls are
learning to weave and herd cattle, drawing water, and collecting
firewood. They begin very young at this work, but it is very light; they
are never overworked, and so it does them no harm usually, but good.

The daughters of better-class people, such as merchants, and clerks, and
advocates, do not, of course, work at field labour. They usually learn
to read and write at home, and they weave, and many will draw water. For
to draw water is to go to the well, and the well is the great
meeting-place of the village. As they fill their jars they lean over the
curb and talk, and it is here that is told the latest news, the latest
flirtation, the little scandal of the place. Very few men or boys come
for water; carrying is not their duty, and there is a proper place for
flirtation. So the girls have the well almost to themselves.

Almost every girl can weave. In many houses there are looms where the
girls weave their dresses and those of their parents; and many girls
have stalls in the bazaar. Of this I will speak later. Other duties are
the husking of rice and the making of cheroots. Of course, in richer
households there will be servants to do all this; but even in them the
daughter will frequently weave either fo