It seems a long time since I wrote to you after poor Jim’s death, and I daresay you will be interested to hear that Cecil and myself are now with Jim’s people at the above address. Well, Uncle, this is to say that things are not going as I should wish with regards to Cecil, and they want very much to send him to a Preparatory School and then to a Public School. This I do not want, because it would be bad for Cecil, and I know what I am talking about. Well, Uncle, I cannot make them see this here, and so I write to you. Will you have Ces and me up at your place for a bit if this is not too inconvenient? I could help in the business like Mother used to, and have a talk with you about Cecil. He’s a lovely little boy, really, and I do want to do the best possible for him.
I must stop now, Uncle, hoping to hear from you before long.
Your affectionate niece,
Rose.
She sealed her letter very carefully before putting it herself into the oaken box on the hall-table. The late Mrs. Smith had imparted pessimistic views to Rose on the subject of private correspondence if left unprotected.
“It isn’t in nature not to read what isn’t meant for you, if it’s lying about,” had said Mrs. Smith, in simple explanation of her own well-informedness upon various affairs that might strictly have been regarded as the concern of her neighbours rather than her own.
Rose, not sufficiently endowed with curiosity herself to indulge in the reading of other people’s correspondence, was quite tolerantly prepared to believe that this was nevertheless the general practice.
When she had finished her letter, she felt happier. No one had said anything to her about her outburst of the preceding evening. She had come down to breakfast heavy-eyed and apprehensive, although no whit less resolved to maintain her own cause, but there had been no sign that any one remembered the existence either of a cause or of a champion.
The conversation had circled placidly round the customary subject of “plans for the day” and the necessity of sending the young man Toby to the station for the 10.39 train.
Rose had been partly relieved, partly disappointed, and wholly perplexed.
She found the Aviolets, their standards, their aims and avoidances, alike incomprehensible. She felt as though it would be an untold relief to return to Uncle Alfred and his shop, where all the pitfalls were of an obvious kind and where approval and disapproval were alike manifested on equally established and well-defined lines.