“No hurry,” growled Sir Thomas. “I’m going to get a drink in the smoking-room. Come along.”
A gesture from Ford detained the doctor.
“One moment. I really should like to consult you on this absurdly magnified subject now that it has been raised.”
The doctor’s experience, both of Ford and of humanity, was too large to allow of his being greatly surprised when the consultation took the form of a very lucid résumé of Ford Aviolet’s own impressions.
“In a sense, the boy is certainly abnormal. He has never been taught the value of truth. He romances. But I refuse to regard it seriously.” Ford made his characteristic gesture, a small, elegant waving of his pince-nez.
“My dear mother is hyper-sensitive on the subject. She imagines that it denotes an ineradicable tendency to criminal deceit. That was the old idea, I suppose. What he needs is to me perfectly obvious.”
So few things were, in the doctor’s opinion, perfectly obvious, that he waited with some curiosity to be enlightened.
“School,” said Ford. “School. A thoroughly healthy English atmosphere, where he’ll get plenty of wholesome knocking about, and be called a little liar when he deserves it.”
“A bloody little liar,” Lucian corrected, and Ford, as the doctor had expected, winced slightly.
“Boys are very brutal, no doubt. But brutality of that kind is exactly what Cecil needs. And, my dear fellow, between ourselves, it’ll be half the battle to get him away from his mother.”