“He is so young, and such a dear little boy, and so good otherwise that I feel sure he can be corrected. But I must ask you, Mrs. Aviolet, to let me have a free hand in dealing with this.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“I said, ‘No.’”
Miss Wade looked quite confounded.
“Now do you suppose,” Rose impatiently inquired, “that I should give anybody a free hand, as you call it, in punishing my own child? What am I his mother for, if I’m to go giving free hands to other people all over the place? But you can tell me what your idea is—unless it’s school, which, I may tell you, I’ve heard enough about—and a bit over.”
“Cecil is hardly fit for school until he has learnt to speak the truth.”
“That’s the first word of sense I’ve heard spoken about it yet. Well, fire ahead.”
“Mrs. Aviolet, I do not wish you to take it upon my word alone, and therefore I will refer you to my authority. Monroe on the ‘Moral Education of Children.’”
“And what has Monroe got to say about it?”