Rose, with her arms akimbo, stood staring back at her with brooding, lowering gaze.
“I’m sure it’s very honest of you, Miss Wade, to tell us what you feel, like that,” said Lady Aviolet. “It’s not your fault, I feel sure. It’s just what I’ve always said: Cecil is a spoilt little boy—yes, my dear Rose, he is—and school is what he requires. He doesn’t know how to stand being laughed at, he doesn’t speak the truth, and now he’s flying into these naughty rages. It’s more than time that he left home.”
“Sorry though I am to say it, I quite agree with you, Lady Aviolet. I should like to look out for another situation at the end of the month, if you please.”
Thus Miss Wade, very red, and with compressed lips.
“Well, well”—Lady Aviolet rose—“we’re in no hurry to settle that, Miss Wade, if you’re not. But I certainly do think, after this, that there can be no question about delaying school any longer. We shall see what Ford says.”
“Seeing what Ford said” was with Lady Aviolet the inevitable concomitant to any suggestion. Before he came home again, however, Rose took the law into her own hands.
She announced abruptly that she was going down to Hurst.
“But, my dear, Ford has already been there. He can tell you all about it.”
Why on earth couldn’t one be allowed to take any step without this eternal, relentless, and yet bloodless, opposition, Rose thought angrily.
“Well, I’m going just the same. I want to see it for myself.”