“It would probably be very good for the world,” I said. “Because only children with character have the pluck to take such a step.”
“No one has ever run away from Osborne House before,” said Miss Saltoun.
“And probably no one ever will again,” I said.
“It will be very damaging to me,” she protested, “if it gets to be known, as of course it must do. Of what did Rose complain?”
I said that I hadn’t asked her.
“Not asked her!” Miss Saltoun exclaimed. And I could see her swiftly putting two and two together and realizing that it was my deplorable indulgence that was at the back of everything.
“No,” I said. “She merely said that she could not stay and had therefore come home.”
“And you allow that? Condone that? It’s too amazing! Is every caprice of a child like this to satisfy you?”
“I don’t think she is capricious,” I said. “I agree with you that the occurrence is unfortunate. I wish it had never been. I wish Rose had not gone to school at all, anywhere. But I would much rather—even at the risk of being unfair to you—that she were not interrogated.”
Miss Saltoun kept her temper under fair control, but she could not help indicating that she was glad that all her pupils had not such impossible parents or foster-parents, and that on the whole she was of the opinion that she was well out of it.