"Please, don't go, Miss Baggerley. We should like to have the benefit of your opinion," remarked Uncle Godfrey.
"Yes, stay, my dear. I should be glad to know what you think," said Granny.
So I remained.
"You tell her what we are talking about, Godfrey," she said.
"All right!" he answered. "Well, the subject under discussion is the advisability of sending Chris to be educated with my sister's little boy. She and her husband have just come home from India, and have taken a house for a time in Norfolk. In a letter my mother had from her this morning, she suggests the plan I have mentioned; in fact, she is most anxious that it should be arranged. I think myself that it is a capital idea, for it seems to me that it would do Chris all the good in the world to have the companionship of another child. He is a capital little chap, but I don't see how it can be good for him to have every whim and fancy attended to as he has at present, by my mother, by you, by everyone as far as I can see, except perhaps that excellent and depressing young woman, Briggs. Oh, I know what you would like to say; much that my mother has already said—that Chris is not easily spoilt, that he has such a good disposition, and so on. All of which I grant; but, nevertheless, I think it would be better for him in the end to have a little less attention given to him than he has at present. Besides, he would have the advantage of an excellent governess, who has been with my sister some time, and, according to her, is a paragon of a teacher. And that is not to be despised, it seems to me. Chris, of course, would always come to my mother for the holidays, so that she still would see a great deal of him. Now, frankly, don't you agree with my view of the case?"
"I suppose so," I answered, though I was conscious of speaking unwillingly, for I knew what it would cost Granny to give up the charge of her darling.
"Of course you do," he replied, "only you don't like to say so for the sake of my mother."
"The darling is very dear to me," said Granny, a little pathetically. "I only desire what is best for him."
"I know that, my dear mother," Uncle Godfrey said gently—he could speak very gently when he liked, in spite of all his decided ways,—"no one could doubt it."
No one spoke for a moment or two, and it was plain to see that a struggle was going on in Granny's mind.