“Of course. I fancy the Harewood boys set him on. And what I thought of was sending Adrian here to be schooled at Mrs. Edgar’s, boarded by you, mothered by Anna, and altogether saved from being made utterly detestable, as he will inevitably be if he remains to tyrannize over Vale Leston.”
“Would his mother consent?”
“You know he is entirely in Clement’s power.”
“It would only be another worry for Clement.”
“He need not have much of him, and I believe he would prefer to have him under his own eye; and Anna will think it bliss to have him, though what it may prove is another question. She will keep you from being too much bothered.”
“My dear Lance, will you never understand, that as furze and thistles are to a donkey, so are shabbiness and bother to me—a native element?”
In the morning Clement, raised on his pillows in bed, showed himself highly grateful for the proposal about his youngest ward.
“It is very good of you, Cherry,” he said. “That poor boy has been very much on my mind. This is the way to profit by my enforced leisure.”
“That’s the way to make me dread him. You were to lie fallow.”
“Not exactly. I have thirteen or fourteen years’ reading and thinking to make up. I have done no more than get up a thing cursorily since I left Vale Leston.”