"Wouldn't you like to go to school, little woman, where my kiddie-widdies are? You've often heard of my Dorothy, now, haven't you? and she's always asking about you. They're all three of them at school at Bridgecrap now, as happy as the day is long. You'd like to go to school, wouldn't you?"
Lily cast a hasty glance at her father. His eyes did not meet hers, but she knew the profoundedly dejected droop of his head, and was acutely sensitive to the meaning of his silence.
The atmosphere in which she and her father lived—of perpetually wounded susceptibilities, of suppressed verities, of only half-sincere demonstrations, continued long after they had ceased to be spontaneous—had made of Lily a super-sensitive, unbalanced creature, distrustful of her own instincts, and almost incapable of clear thinking. She had become the victim of muddle, the commonest and the most disastrous foundation upon which to build up a life.
It now seemed to her that it would be impossible to speak the truth in the face of the obvious pain that it would give her father, while at the same time she was aware of the utter uselessness of telling a lie. To tell a lie, incidentally, was a sin, but then so was it a sin to be heartless and undutiful, and the latter was fraught with the more painful consequences of the two.
Good-natured Charlie Hardinge saw, without understanding it, the conflict reflected on her small, pale face.
"Come, come, come, come! You look as though school would do you all the good in the world. My kiddies have got cheeks like roses, and Dorothy holds herself like a grenadier—head up, shoulders back! They think Bridgecrap the jolliest place in the world."
"Is it a large school?" asked Lily, evading the point at issue with absolute relief.
"Thirty girls. Miss Melody has some very nice kiddies there indeed—girls you're likely to see something of, later on. Very nice girls—girls that Ethel and I thoroughly liked the look of. Walk well, hold themselves well, keen on all sorts of games——"
It might be said that Philip eventually sent Lily to Bridgecrap in spite of Charlie Hardinge's recommendations, rather than because of them.
The thing that really moved him most, although he was quite unaware that it was the determining factor in his decision, was Charlie's positive assurance that Lily was losing her prettiness.