Rose gloomily undertook not to interfere with the visit of the Marchmonts, inexpressibly dull as she had always felt them to be. She made an appointment with the headmaster at Hurst, and obtained the companionship of Miss Lucian on her expedition. She was fond of Henrietta Lucian, both for a certain terse humour that was entirely lacking in the society of Squires, and for her matter-of-fact acceptance of little Cecil’s foible, and robust affection for him. Rose found it a relief to have her intention of visiting Hurst taken for granted, without reference to its entailing any future decision. She felt able to put into words a fact that had hitherto vexed her spirit almost too deeply for utterance.
“You know they’ve managed to make Ces perfectly wild to come to this place.”
Rose’s “they” was always unmistakable.
“It’s natural.”
“Of him? I know it is. But it makes it much harder for me to stick to what I’ve said about his not going.”
“Do you mean to stick to it, then?”
“Well, honestly, I don’t know. I’ll see what this blooming place is like. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d ever even think of school for him, after all I’ve said against it, I’d have called you no better than a liar. But I’ve had to own that I don’t seem to be making a great hand of keeping him away. I thought at first that if I had him to myself, it’d be better, but when we were in London, him and me, it wasn’t really a great success. He wasn’t well, for one thing, and he was always talking about the games and animals and things at Squires, poor lamb. And that governess, that Miss Wade, hasn’t done him any good, for all her rotten little books on education. She hasn’t cured him of telling fibs.”
“Poor little man!”
“Nothing seems to do him any good, that way. I know they’ve told him a whole lot about God, and how He hates lies, and always knows when people aren’t speaking the truth, and so on and so forth. I never could stuff him up with all that, myself, not knowing much about it, or caring either.”
“It might be an incentive to Cecil to speak the truth. I shouldn’t discourage any motive that might help him.”