"She isn't asleep at all," said Aunt Adeline. "She's shamming, the little monkey."
Jerrold thought he knew why. He turned into the old nursery that was the schoolroom now, and found Eliot there, examining a fly's leg under his microscope. It was Eliot that he wanted..
"I say, you know, Mum's making a jolly mistake about that kid. Trying to go on as if she was Anne's mother. You can see it makes her sick. It would me, if my mother was dead."
Eliot looked as if he wasn't listening, absorbed in his fly's leg.
"Somebody's got to tell her."
"Are you going to," said Eliot, "or shall I?"
"Neither. I shall get Dad to. He'll do it best."
vii
Robert Fielding didn't do it all at once. He put it off till Adeline gave him his chance. He found her alone in the library and she had begun it.
"Robert, I don't know what to do about that child."