Mrs. Curtis was not a little surprised. For a good sixteen years Mr. Whately had refused to consider the possibility of any education for Roland other than Fernhurst and Brasenose.
“But you are not thinking of taking him away from Fernhurst and not sending him to Brasenose?” she said.
“Oh, no, Mrs. Curtis, but I have been thinking that if we could do things all over again I am not at all sure but that’s not the way I should have arranged his education.”
That was the first step.
A few nights later he came round again, and again talked of the value of two or three months in France.
“What does Roland think about it, Mr. Whately?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, I only heard from Roland on the subject to-day; he seems quite keen on it. I just threw it out as a suggestion to him. I pointed out that most of his friends will have left at the end of the term, that next year he would be rather lonely, and that there would not be anything very much for him to do when he came down from Oxford. He seemed to agree with me.”
Mrs. Curtis, however, was no fool. She had spent the greater part of her middle age sitting in front of a fire watching life drift past her, and her one amusement had been the examination of the motives and actions of her friends.
“There is something rather curious here,” she said that evening to her husband. “As long as we have known the Whatelys they have insisted on the value of public school and university education. Now, quite suddenly, they have turned round, and they are talking about business and commerce and the value of French.”
Mr. Curtis, who was a credulous creature, saw no reason why they should not change their minds if they wanted to.