It was perhaps the best thing she could have said, as showing that she was more interested in the effect she would produce some day than in the sensation she had created there and then.
"May I go round to Rosalind's after lessons?"
"You may."
"And may I stay to lunch if they ask me?"
"You may stay as long as they care to have you. Stay to tea, stay to dinner, if you like."
Dorothy knew by the behaviour of her mother's face that she had scored somewhere, somehow. She also knew that she was in disgrace and yet not in disgrace; which, if you came to think of it, was a funny thing.
About this time Frances began to notice a symptom in herself. She was apt to resent it when Vera discussed her children with her. One late afternoon she and Anthony were alone with Vera. Captain Cameron had not come round that day, and Bartie had gone into town to consult either his solicitor or a specialist. He was always consulting one or the other.
"You're wrong, you two," said Vera. "You think Michael's tender and Nicky's hard and unimpressionable. Michael's hard. You won't have to bother about Michael's feelings."
"Michael's feelings," said Frances, "are probably what I shall have to bother about more than anything."
"You needn't. For one thing, they'll be so unlike your feelings that you won't know whether they're feelings at all. You won't even know whether he's having them or not. Nicky's the one you'll have to look out for. He'll go all the howlers."