“I don’t think I quite understand what you mean, Mrs. Aviolet.”
She looked so frightened that Rose burst out laughing.
“He said something about it just now, that’s all, and you know, nothing’s settled yet, and he’s very backward about lessons.”
“I am doing my best to get him on as fast as possible,” replied Miss Wade, now obviously rather offended, “but of course if you’re not satisfied with his progress, Mrs. Aviolet, I’d much rather be told so. I quite understand——”
“Oh, my Lord!” was the exasperated exclamation of Rose Aviolet. “I don’t mean that at all. He’s getting on like a house on fire. I only mean that it isn’t any good, him or anybody else, thinking that he’s going dashing off to school as a matter of course, just because it’s supposed to be the proper thing to do.”
Rose’s explanation did not appear to afford any illumination to little Miss Wade.
“Lady Aviolet distinctly informed me that I was preparing Cecil for school,” she said. “If he were not so behindhand in English—though I’m sure it’s very natural that he should be so, after India—I should have started him in Latin by this time.”
“Ceylon isn’t India,” said Rose, infuriated, and walked out of the nursery.
Half-way downstairs again, remorse suddenly overtook her.
“What a pig I am! Worse than the Pryce-Jones woman was to me, and, after all, it might just as well be me sitting stuffed up in that old nursery mending Cecil’s clothes and her prancing down to dinner in a low frock. I’d better——”