“It’s a shame to inflict all this grumbling on you; but I needed an outlet. It wouldn’t do to grumble to Herbert because he was so greatly against having a governess. He would say it was what he foresaw, and advise me to get rid of her. I shouldn’t like to do that. I always feel easy in my mind about them when I leave them now. She is entirely trustworthy.”
“I think I should put my foot down upon that point,” Mrs Carruthers advised. “That sort of thing can become annoying. Some people are greedy for authority, and if you give in to them they become arbitrary. If you want the children any hour of the day, have them, whether it is the time for their rest or any other legitimate exercise.”
“And spoil their tempers,” laughed Pamela.
“Rubbish!” scoffed Mrs Carruthers. “Temper in the human animal develops naturally. One has to spank it out of them. All children are not brought up by rule, you know; it isn’t possible in some households. We were dragged up; but I must add that our tempers on the whole did not suffer as a result. Keep their little bodies nourished, and their minds will develop of themselves. The one thing, I suppose, every mother strives to do is to develop her baby on the lines she considers the most admirable; and the baby invariably develops on its own lines, because it is an individual. It is difficult to regard the infant as an individual. We imagine we form its character; but nature forms its character in the embryo stage; we merely advance its development by the aid of our own experience. See more of your children, Pamela, my dear; nothing will ever make up to you, nor to them, the enjoyment you forego in your present separation.”
She rose abruptly, and approached Pamela’s side. Stooping, she took the wistful face between her hands and kissed it.
“I am a stony-hearted, philosophical lunatic,” she said. “Go and put on your hat, you blessed infant, and come out for a walk with me.”
Chapter Thirteen.
Miss Maitland had been some months in the house before Arnott became in any degree alive to her actual presence. He met her occasionally coming in or going out. Usually she had the children with her, and a coloured girl in charge of the boy. He always passed them, thankful that politeness demanded nothing further than the raising of his hat. Sometimes he encountered her on the stairs, when he felt constrained to make a remark. But she was exceedingly retiring, and appeared quite as anxious as he was to avoid these encounters. She had a habit of effacing herself when he was at home.