‘Well, we’re in London now. Grannie moved there to be near my school. Where do you go to school?’
‘I don’t. I have classes by myself with a man who coaches boys for Oxford and Cambridge. He’s a vicar. And then I have music lessons from a person who comes from London, and Daddy teaches me Greek and Latin. My Mother and Father don’t believe in girl’s schools.’ That sounded rude and priggish. She blushed and added. ‘But I do. It’s awfully dull by myself.’
‘Why don’t you get your Mother to send you to my school?’ said Mariella. ‘It’s ripping fun. You could come up to London every day.’
‘Mariella loves her school,’ said Julian. ‘It’s topping. She doesn’t learn anything and plays hockey all day. Judith’s parents want her to be educated, Mariella. You don’t understand. Isn’t that so, Judith?’
Judith blushed again and was afraid it was so.
‘I believe in female education,’ muttered Julian to his boots.
They had become extremely queer creatures as they grew up, thought Judith. The boys especially were very peculiar, with their height and pallor and their trick of over-emphatic speech. Julian was immensely tall and cadaverous, with a stormy, untidy, hideous face, and eloquent eyes that seemed always to be changing colour in their deep sockets. He actually had lines in his cheeks, and his nose was becoming hooked, with dilated, back-sweeping nostrils.
‘Well, I wish you’d come,’ said Mariella unruffled, after a silence. ‘It’s ripping. You’d love it.’
It was nice of Mariella to be so friendly and pressing. Perhaps she had always been very fond of you, had missed you.... Judith’s heart warmed.
‘I wish you’d come back and live here, Mariella. It was so lovely when you did.’