“I wouldn’t for the world,” said Rose. “Only it doesn’t, you see. Make any difference, I mean. I can’t see that he cares a hang whether God minds his telling lies or not. I don’t believe he knows when he’s telling them.”
“It’s probably a bad habit, like any other. He’ll either grow out of it, or leave it off when he finds out for himself that the game isn’t worth the candle. School might teach him that, you know.”
Miss Lucian’s arguments might not be original, but Rose received them thankfully enough in her new perplexity.
The pleasant, spacious building called Hurst made a favourable impression on her, and she met Mr. Lambert without any of the repressed hostility that the mere mention of his name had always roused in her at Squires.
He was a tall, curly-haired man with an agreeable manner, much younger than Rose had expected him to be. She was naïvely pleased and flattered because he spoke to her almost at once of “Cecil,” as though he felt an interest in the boy sufficiently great to have remembered his name.
They were shown the class-rooms, dining-room, dormitories, gymnasium, the Chapel, and the playing-fields, and finally taken through a red baize door beyond which Mrs. Lambert had her drawing-room.
“Let me introduce my wife, Mrs. Aviolet and Miss Lucian.”
Mrs. Lambert also looked younger than Rose had expected her to look, and her round, freckled face was pretty and good-humoured, with big blue eyes glowing like dark jewels under an open forehead and curling brown hair.
She talked very freely and enthusiastically about the school, and her warmth of manner drew Rose towards her very strongly. She listened eagerly to Mrs. Lambert’s practical assurances.
“They really do get enough to eat, you know. I can so well understand any mother feeling dreadful about letting her boy go all by himself to a strange place—but truly, Mrs. Aviolet, I promise you they’re well looked after. My own little boy is in the school, you know. You shall see him, and then you can tell whether he’s a good advertisement.” Her gay, jolly laugh was justified by the appearance of the boy, a healthy, happy-looking specimen, who ran into the room, shook hands, and then burst out with some eager petition to his father.