Nor did I feel particularly pleased with the position I had been forced to take up. It was not too civil, and I doubt if it was just to the schoolmistress. But Rose was my first consideration, and I knew with crystal clearness that no possible good to either could come out of a cross-examination of her by Miss Saltoun. Miss Saltoun would have been hostile and suspicious, utterly incapable of understanding the child’s fundamental honesty and courage, nor would she have had any belief that a child’s antipathies, a child’s dislike of Dr. Fell, need not be less sincere or important than an adult’s. To her, children were immature beings to be taught deportment and the length of rivers; to me, Rose was an individual, separate and complete, with private sensitivenesses and loyalties that must not be harmed.
Miss Saltoun caught her train, and I drove over to Mrs. O’Gorman to fetch Rose back. I had sent her there for the day, to be out of the way and also to be in the company of the most sensible woman I knew.
I found them turning over old volumes of “Punch,” and having sent Rose off to help Julia in some capacity or other, Mrs. O’Gorman turned to me with a smile on her mischievous old face.
“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” I remarked.
“You ought to be proud of yourself,” she said.
“Why?”
“To have brought her up so well. I don’t mean what you’ve taught her, but to have left so much resolution in her. Most people knock it out.”
“More chance than design,” I said.
“Anyway, she’s got it,” said Mrs. O’Gorman, “and if she always obeys impulse and cuts her losses so promptly she won’t go far wrong. Her heart’s true.”
“Meanwhile?” I asked.