English Social Sciences Education / Pedagogy

The girl, who’s 16, has just come to England from Italy, for family reasons (not for education). She has met with a tutor of her early youth, and he’s asking why she (and her mother) has come to England so unexpectedly. It’s early 1900s (hence, I suppose, no widespread practice of sending girls to school).
(tutor) “You aren’t under any cloud?”
(girl) “I?”
(tutor) “You haven’t by any chance decided that you want to go to school?”
(girl) “Good heavens. Isn’t it much too late for that?”
(tutor) “That is what I should have thought. Though I’m told the schools are full of girls of sixteen. You know you could get into Oxford tomorrow and standing on your head.”
(girl) “Mr James! (tutor’s name)”
(tutor) “Cambridge, if you prefer.”
(girl) “A woman’s college?”
(tutor) “Dear child, it might do them a world of good. But you haven’t told me yet what you are doing?”