‘That is true. Really, Lily, I believe you are the most likely person to do some good with her, though I don’t think you know what you are in for. But Gillian does!’
‘I believe it is very good for the children to have to exercise a little forbearance. In spite of all our knocking about the world, our family exclusiveness is pretty much what ours was in the old Beechcroft days—’
‘When Rotherwood and Robert Mohun were out only outsiders and the Westons came on us like new revelations!’
‘It is curious to look back on,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘It seems to me that the system, or no system, on which we were brought up was rather passing away even then.’
‘Specks we growed,’ said Jane. ‘What do you call the system?’
‘Just that people thought it their own business to bring up their children themselves, and let the actual technical teaching depend upon opportunities, whereas now they get them taught, but let the bringing up take it chance.’
‘People lived with their children then—yes, I see what you mean, Lily. Poor Eleanor, intending with all her might to be a mother to us, brought us up, as you call it, with all her powers; but public opinion would never have suffered us to get merely the odd sort of teaching that she could give us. It was regular, or course; but oh! do you remember the old atlas, with Germany divided into circles, and everything as it was before the Congress of Vienna?’
‘You liked geography; I hated it.’
‘Yes, I was young enough to come in for the elder boys’ old school atlases, which had some sense in them. It seems to me that we had more the spirit of working for ourselves according to our individual tastes than people have now. We learnt, they are taught.’
‘Well! and what did we learn?’