“Ces isn’t going to school,” she muttered. “They’ll make him worse there.”
She often thought of Cecil’s boyish untruthfulness as a disease, just as Lady Aviolet viewed it as the result of a lack of education, Sir Thomas as a vulgar form of childish naughtiness, and Ford——?
It was not so easy to penetrate to Ford’s convictions, but he had hinted that a mixed heredity led to strange results, and Rose knew that his family pride was outraged by the infusion of Smith blood in Cecil’s veins. She even had a certain tolerant understanding of his feelings, though none for his unpleasing manifestations of them.
It annoyed her, secretly, to see that little Cecil admired his uncle, even although he sometimes seemed to be afraid of him.
Cecil was joyful and excited at the prospect of lunch out of doors. In the pony-cart, he chattered incessantly, and Lady Aviolet responded with great patience, until he suddenly said:
“I can carry the partridges for them. I always carry the rabbits when Uncle Ford shoots. Sometimes they’re all bleeding, but I don’t mind a bit. I always carry them.”
“Cecil,” said his grandmother sharply, “don’t boast! How many times have you carried the shot rabbits for Uncle Ford?”
There was just that suggestion of a trap for inaccuracy in her tone that always scared Cecil, and Rose hastily answered for him.
“Only once, wasn’t it, Cecil?”
“Then why does he say ‘always’?” said Lady Aviolet.