"Yes. For a humble tutor and lecturer to get such a chance..."
"Free house and garden," chirped Mrs. Carmichael, seeing womanly visions and dreaming womanly dreams, "and with prospects of becoming a master in time. What a pity..."
She knew, alas, that Muriel would refuse to be dazzled.
"Well, since you seem to have made up your mind to throw up a good thing for a doubtful one"—Mr. Carmichael never wasted time on vain regrets—"I agree that your science and geological knowledge will be invaluable to your employers and I had better tell you what I have seen of the district."
The talk drifted into generalities, and Mrs. Carmichael began to price Ferlie's winter coat and remind herself to impress it upon the matron at Peter's school that Peter was really an Exceptional Boy. She believed in a private appeal to the only woman in an establishment full of unimaginative men. Pictured the red-roofed bungalow in Rangoon without the children's toys annoying her husband in the verandah. Remembered all the other Colonial mothers and wondered why that made the pain worse instead of better. Rejoiced that she had, at least, got the better of Robin in the matter of Ferlie's education. None of your hard modern schools, over-developing brain and body at the expense of femininity. Reaction must set in soon on this count, and Muriel Vane was nothing if not a warning. There could come a revival of the old-fashioned home-school, where it was so fortunate that the kind Miss Maynes had welcomed the thought of having Peter for the holidays.
They could not have agreed to take just any boy, they had told her—in fact none had, up to date, been offered them—but, in the circumstances, "Why, it is really our duty, dear Mrs. Carmichael."
Yes, Lady Vigor's daughter had always remained with them and, naturally, they had taken her to the seaside. How impossible, thought Ferlie's mother, to have entrusted Ferlie or Peter to Aunt Brillianna.
Brillianna Trefusis, a maternal aunt of Robin's, who was, nevertheless, not more than five years his senior, was an eccentric lady who travelled a great deal, spoke boldly and wore a disconcerting air suggesting that life amused her. And she did not go to church!
Mused Ferlie's mother, it was all very well for the men-folk to content themselves with prayer by proxy, reaping where their loyal wives had sown, but if the women were also to desert the old and tried paths to that Better Land, Far, Far Away, the chances were that the Judgment would fall due before anyone had reached those Eternal Bowers, and the travellers find themselves shooed into Outer Darkness to the tune of "Depart, ye Cursed!" And Ferlie was so responsive to her surroundings: Aunt B. could easily have raised doubts in her mind as to the authenticity of Lazarus and Jonah, and when once you began to pick and choose...
"No, I am afraid she is still out in the park, Cyprian. What's that? Crystallized apricots? Oh, but you really shouldn't. I could give them to her when she comes in.... Well, if you will ... she's sure to be near the pond. Thank you, Peter is quite well. So odd! He says his form master asked him where he had learnt the secret of perpetual motion. Such a silly sort of thing to say to a child."