His sister said the same thing that evening.
“The fuss must have frightened the poor little thing until he didn’t know what he was saying. I hope they’ll leave it alone now, and not drag the high-and-mighty Mr. Ford into it. If they frighten the child, they’ll never teach him to speak the truth. I should have thought Lady Aviolet would have known that much.”
“I tried to tell her so.”
“What did Rose do?”
In common with everybody else, the doctor’s sister made a liberal use of Christian names in the absence of their owners.
“She seems sensible—though I think she spoils him, in a way. But she’s hopeless with her mother-in-law, and doesn’t seem to know the meaning of tact. I should imagine that they get upon one another’s nerves the whole time. She’s a different creature, at Squires, to what she was down here.”
“Poor thing! I hope she’ll come here again.”
“She’ll come fast enough if she can bring the boy. He’s her one thought in life, I can see that.”
“Of course she can bring him,” Miss Lucian declared vigorously. “What do I care how many fibs he tells, poor little chap!”
The doctor was too well used to his sister’s trenchant methods of expressing herself to protest at such singularly perverted tolerance of spirit.