Three generations

CHAPTER VII
My father's circumstances had become less and less
hopeful, until the possibility of his daughters having
to face the future depending on their own exertions
had grown into a certainty. My elder sisters had
already been governesses for several years. Even-
tually, we young women combined forces, and began
a school for girls in the little town of our birth which
we knew so well. We were destined to fill the places
of the imposing Misses McPherson and the less im-
pressive Misses Greig. It is a practice of the present
generation, with its great educational advantages, to
ridicule such schools. No doubt, so far as thorough-
ness, thorough knowledge, is concerned, there is reason
for scornful criticism. When learning dressmaking
and such posts as housekeeper and waiting-maid had
fallen quite out of count for girls of the middle class,
there was absolutely nothing for them by which they
could earn a living except as teachers. They might
not have had the slightest aptitude or inclination for
teaching, their own education might have been of the
most meagre description, but the fact remained that
there was nothing else for them to do so long as the
prejudices of the day made them, and their friends for
them, shrink from the descent in the social scale, with
the forfeiture of their claims as gentlewomen and the
loss of their former associates.
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