"Learn something? What do you mean—learn something? Haven't they been learning something all their lives—at least since Miss Bird began to teach them? What does a girl want to learn, except how to read and write a good hand and add up accounts? I don't want any spectacled, short-haired, flat-chested females in my house, thank you. The children are very well as they are. They're naughty sometimes, I've no doubt, but they're good girls on the whole. Girls ought to be brought up at home under their mother's eye. I can't think what you want to send them away from you for, Nina. It isn't like you. I should have thought you would have missed them. I know I should, and they're not going to school."
"I should miss them very much," said Mrs. Clinton.
"Very well, then, let them stop at home. It's quite simple."
Mrs. Clinton was silent, bending her head over her work.
"You would miss them and I should miss them," pursued the Squire, after a pause. "No, there's no sense in it."
There was another pause, and then the Squire asked, "Why do you want to send them to school?"
Mrs. Clinton laid down her work and looked at him. "I should be satisfied," she said, "if they could get the teaching they ought to have at home. Perhaps I should prefer it. But it would mean a first-class governess living here, and——"
"Well, there's no objection to that," interrupted the Squire. "I dare say old Miss Bird is a little out of date. Get a good governess by all means; only not a blue-stocking, mind you."
Mrs. Clinton smiled. "I'm afraid she would have to be what you would call a blue-stocking," she said. "But she needn't show it. Clever girls don't wear spectacles and short hair necessarily nowadays."
"Oh, don't they?" said the Squire good-humouredly. He was leaning back in his chair now, looking at the fire. "How are you going to set about getting one?"