‘No, no, please, Emma, he has had quite as many as he ought! No, no, Mite—’ and he was borne off sobbing in her arms, while Ida observed, ‘There! is that the way people treat their own children?’
‘Some people never get rid of the governess,’ observed Mrs. Morton, quite unconscious that but for her interference there would have been no contest and no tears.
But she herself had no doubts, and was mollified by Mary’s plea on her return. ‘He is quite good now, but you see, there is so much danger of our spoiling him, we feel that we cannot begin too soon to make him obedient.’
‘I could not bear to keep a poor child under in that way.’
‘I believe it saves them a great deal if obedience is an instinct,’ said Mary.
It had not been Mrs. Morton’s method, and she
was perfectly satisfied with the result, so she only made some inarticulate sound; but she thought Frank quite as unnatural, when he kept Michael on his knee at breakfast, but with only an empty spoon to play with! All the tossing and playing, the radiant smiles between the two did not in her eyes atone for these small beginnings of discipline, even though her brother-in-law’s first proceeding, whenever he came home, was to look for his son, and if the child were not in the drawing-room, to hurry up to the nursery and bring him down, laughing and shouting.
The Tyrolean nurse had been sacrificed to those notions of training which the Westhaven party regarded as so harsh. Her home sickness and pining for her mountains had indeed fully justified the ‘rampant consciences,’ as to the humanity as well as the expedience of sending her home before her indulgence of the Kleiner Freiherr had had time to counteract his parents’ ideas, and her place had been supplied by the nurse whom Amice was outgrowing, so that Ida was disappointed of her intentions of examining her, and laid up the circumstances as suspicious, though, on the other hand, her mother was gratified at exercising a bit of patronage by recommending a nursery girl from Westhaven. The next winter, however, was not marked by a visit to Northmoor. Ida had been having her full share of the summer and early autumnal gaieties of Westhaven, and among the yachts who were given to putting in there was a certain Morna, belonging to Sir Thomas Brady, who had become a baronet by force of success in speculation. His son, who chiefly
used it, showed evident admiration of Miss Morton’s bright cheeks and eyes, and so often resorted to Westhaven, and dropped in at what she had named Northmoor cottage, that there was fair reason for supposing that this might result in more than an ordinary flirtation.
However, at the regatta, when she had looked for distinguished attention on his part, she felt herself absolutely neglected, and the very next day the Morna sailed away, without a farewell.