“He knows that now,” said Rose wearily. “You don’t understand. Sometimes I don’t think it’s his own fault, poor darling! He can’t help it.”
“Well, that’s just what I say,” the girl argued perseveringly. “He’ll know better later on. And really and truly, it’s perfectly wonderful what school does for them. My young brother Tony was very delicate as a baby, and I’m afraid we spoilt him dreadfully, but he improved in the most marvellous way after his first term at a preparatory school. It seems to make them so much more manly and sensible, you know.”
“Ces is manly already,” cried Rose, going off at a tangent. “I don’t know what you’d say if you could see what ordinary children are like, after being born and brought up in the tropics. They haven’t got a kick left in them by the time they get home, as a rule, nor for months afterwards.”
“I didn’t mean——”
“That’s all right. I know you didn’t. I suppose the whole thing’s got on my nerves, rather. It’s always Cecil this, and Cecil that, it seems to me.”
“Only because they’re so—so interested in him.”
“I daresay, but it’s a funny way of showing it. You’d think they’d have the sense to see, old people like them, that of course I know more about him than they do.”
“But you know, he wants to go to school himself—really he does. He says so.”
“I know,” said Rose briefly and bitterly.
“Well, then——?”