“How can it be otherwise?” asked Kent. “You want to put an industrial school boy of the most unconventional type and upbringing into the most caste-bound, conventional profession under the sun. It's like putting a bit of metallic sodium into water. A pretty experiment, though rather common; but the result is an explosion.”
“But he must be trained and made a gentleman first,” cried Winifred, coming to Clytie's assistance.
“Of course,” said Clytie. “Should he ever be able to get into the army, he will be by that time quite a different being to what he is now.”
“Then you'll have to give him a rigid, conventional training, and so spoil him,” said Kent.
“It wouldn't spoil him to learn to speak the Queen's English and the use of his knife and, fork,” said Clytie a little defiantly.
“He'd have to learn more than that. Besides, how is he to be taught?”
“That's what I've come to you for advice about.”
Kent mused for a moment and stroked his beard.
“Are you very much bent upon this?” he asked.
“Yes.”