There was a steely note in Harry’s voice: “Oh, he’s got brains. He can have coaching. It’s what he hasn’t got and what he can’t get that’s going to get Huggo withdrawn.”
“What is it you mean?”
“A home.”
She slightly raised the fingers of her hands and dropped them. This subject!
Harry said: “Hammond says more than I’ve told you.”
“I supposed he did. ‘Apart from that.’ Apart from what?”
“It’s Huggo’s character he’s writing to me about. This is what he says. ‘The boy, though young, has not a good influence in his house. If I may suggest it, he does not, during the holidays, see enough of his home.’”
He folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. “Does it strike you that is going to be easy for me to answer?”
“It might be easier, Harry, if your tone made it possible for us to discuss it.”
He gave a sound that was glint, as it were, of the blade in his voice: “Our discussions! I am a little tired of that blind alley, Rosalie.”