He shook a thick forefinger at her, and the scorn died out of her eyes. The men who most countenance the woman’s movement are seldom masterful. Aunt Amabel began to like this dictatorial man. It was a new, and not altogether disagreeable, experience to be rated.
“You have a school, haven’t you?” she asked, sweetly.
The schoolmaster’s dun-colored face crimsoned. “My dear young lady,” he answered hotly, “if you imagine that I came to see you because I was touting for another pupil, pray dismiss the idea from your mind.” This time it was Aunt Amabel who blushed. “I came because, knowing a good deal of boys, I feel sure that your nephew is delicate because he is lonely and unoccupied; he is a very boyish boy, a boy who needs the companionship of his own kind. You have an excellent preparatory school quite near here. Try for a term—see what it does for Reginald.”
“To be quite candid,” said Aunt Amabel, “we do not care for the training, mental or moral, that boys receive at the average preparatory school.”
“Try one that’s not average,” he interrupted. “There are plenty of them, all fads and flannel shirts and girls thrown in. He won’t learn anything, but what does that matter? It’s health and youth and gladness that you want for him, and a normal point of view; at present that child’s a perfect misogynist.”
The lady started at the word, and at this critical moment her nephew came into the room. At first he did not see his friend of the Bodleian; when he did he stopped short, looking from his aunt to her visitor with puzzled, timid eyes.
“Reginald,” said Aunt Amabel, “this gentleman says you are lonely and unhappy, and that you would really like to go to school. Is this so?”
“Yes.”
The timid look faded from the boy’s eyes to be replaced by one that was almost stern, so earnest was it.
“Why have you never said anything to me about it? You have never complained.”