“That’ll be different, at school. He’ll do as the others do, and there are sure to be plenty of beginners. He won’t be afraid of being laughed at, when he isn’t the only one. Maurice thinks, you know, that it’s that fear of being laughed at that’s at the bottom of all Cecil’s troubles.”
“I know what you mean,” said Rose rather gloomily. “His story-telling. There hasn’t been a word about that, in any of Mrs. Lambert’s letters. I’m sure I hope there’ll never have to be.”
Mrs. Lambert, indeed, writing intimately of Cecil’s physical welfare, touched very little upon other subjects.
Rose had left Squires, and gone to pay her promised visit to the Lucians, before she received confirmation of the fear that had all the time been lurking at her heart.
At Squires, her farewells had been complicated by a slight tinge of remorse that she could make them no more cordial.
“Well, good-bye, my dear. We shall expect you for the holidays, remember. I don’t want to hurry you, but Tucker is at the door, and you must allow for the hill.”
Rose had heard that information bestowed, identically worded, upon every departing guest that she had ever seen at Squires.
“Good-bye. Thanks awfully for having had me for such ages—and Ces, too. I hope I haven’t seemed cross and beastly, very often, but——”
“My dear, please! (Les domestiques!) Ah, here’s Ford.”
“Good-bye, Ford.”