Underneath the paint and the white powder, he could see that she had flushed deeply.
“About sending my Ces to school. That’s what they want to do, of course. Well, I wouldn’t say a word if he was like other boys, but he isn’t. You’ve seen that for yourself—and besides they talk enough about it, goodness knows. You know what’s wrong with Cecil. Well, I think school will make that worse. He’s not fit for school.”
She spoke with extraordinary vehemence, and both her hearers were silent. Presently Henrietta Lucian said:
“There’s never been an Aviolet yet, I suppose, who hasn’t been a public-school boy?”
“Never, and there’s never been an Aviolet like Ces is, either. But he can be put right, I know he can. Why, I always get the truth out of him in the end. But if he goes to school, and gets told he’s a liar and finds nobody trusts him—why, he’ll lie himself black in the face to try and make himself seem what he isn’t. I’m his mother, and I know. But he isn’t going to school.”
“Isn’t his uncle his guardian?”
“Yes. A bit of poor Jim’s tomfoolery that was, too. Of course I never knew about it. I suppose he thought it’d make them take more interest. But even Ford won’t make me give in about this school business.”
“Are you quite sure it mightn’t be a good thing for your boy?” the doctor asked.
“Quite,” she said fiercely. “I’ve seen what a public-school education made of Jim, and though I don’t say I wouldn’t have let Cecil go if he’d been an ordinary child, I won’t, as things are. A thing may be all right for ninety-nine people and wrong for the hundredth. Ces is the hundredth.”
“You’ve got a fight before you,” Lucian told her plainly.