Then Sir Thomas spoke, also unhurried, but with his coarse grey eyebrows drawn close together and coming down well over his wrinkled lids.
“What’s all this nonsense about? Of course the boy goes to school—all boys go to school.”
“It’ll ruin Ces,” said Rose, panting. “Look here, I’d not say a word if he was like other boys. But he isn’t, and he’ll get worse and worse if he’s put with people who don’t understand him. There’s a kink in him somewhere, and he’s not fit for the sort of treatment that runs all boys into a mould and turns them out to pattern.”
“Your opinions of the English public-school system are extremely interesting, Rose,” said Ford with great suavity, “but perhaps you’ll allow me to ask what experience you have had on the subject. Your father was not a public-school man, I believe?”
“He was a bankrupt North London tradesman, and you know it.”
“Quite so. Your other relations?”
“We needn’t go into all that, my boy. Rose has a very natural objection to parting from her only child, but I hope we can make her realize that it’s all for the boy’s own good in the end.”
Sir Thomas’s intention was obviously conciliatory, but Lucian realized, and saw that Ford realized, that his implication of amiable maternal weakness was infuriating to Rose Aviolet’s vanity.
“I’m not a fool,” she cried out. “I’ve told you before that if Ces was an ordinary child, I’d be the first person to say he should go to school.”
Ford’s low, slight laugh jarred on the doctor with a sudden intensity that surprised himself.