Page 6 of Second Chances
“It is kind of you to say so,” he said. “Georgette is too loud and Robert is too quiet. One would have thought the Creator in his wisdom might have balanced them out a little more evenly.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “the Creator in his wisdom knew exactly what he was doing.”
Ah. He must remember that.
“Robert’s extreme shyness was sweet when he was two,” he said, “and endearing when he was three. It is worrisome now that he is almost six.”
The innkeeper opened the door again, and his wife and the maid came past him, the former carrying a covered tureen of soup, the latter bearing a basket of bread. The older woman ladled out their soup, which had smelled so appetizing when the children ate earlier, and all three withdrew and shut the door behind them.
“It is altogether possible,” Miss Thompson said as she picked up her spoon, “that your son’s shyness would grow worse if he were forced to try to overcome it. He will probably always be quiet. It is unlikely, though, that he will always hide his face from strangers. He will no doubt find a way to balance his shyness with basic good breeding if he is allowed to develop at his own pace and learn to be comfortable in his world.”
“His nurse, who loves him quite fiercely, I might add,” he said, “sometimes sends him to bed if he refuses to greet a visitor. It is not a huge punishment, of course, for more often than not he simply falls asleep. But it is a punishment, nevertheless. It implies rejection, which she tells him can be avoided with just a little sociability and courteous behavior.”
“And it is not for me to question either his nurse’s method of bringing up her charges or yours,” she said. “I do beg your pardon. There is no single right way of raising a child, is there, and those who have none of their own are invariably the very best parents in the world.” Her eyes were twinkling.
“No, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I did not invite you to dine in order to bore you to tears with my concerns over my children.”
“Children are never boring,” she said. “Oh, sometimes one would like nothing better than to run screaming from them and not stop for the next hundred miles or so, but it is never because of boredom.”
“You have personal experience?” he asked.
“Only as an aunt as far as young children are concerned,” she said, “and that is a remarkably easy task, for one can spend time with them when one wishes and walk away when one has had enough. One can ignore their mischief and whining and tantrums with the certain assurance that one is not responsible for dealing with them. I had a small taste of being solely in charge of a class of young ones, however, when I substituted a couple of times for my sister at the village school where she taught. Each time I was exhausted by the end of the day and quite feared I might never recover.”
He laughed. “You were never tempted to be a teacher yourself, then?” he asked.
“Actually I was,” she told him, “and gave in to temptation. But I teach older girls at a school in Bath—the youngest of them are eleven. I find the work both pleasant and rewarding, though at present, I must confess, I am in the process of escaping gleefully for a summer holiday of peace and quiet and sanity.”
She needed to work for a living, then, though she was certainly a gentlewoman.
“And your very first day of peace and sanity brought you via a vicious thunderstorm into the company of my daughter,” he said. “You must be wondering what you have done to deserve such punishment.”
“Not at all,” she said. “I know the answer. I lost my patience with one of my girls last term and needed the reproof. But what is one to do when a girl one has been shaping into a genteel young lady for two whole years shows her disapproval of another girl’s actions by crossing her eyes, poking out her tongue, sticking her thumbs in her ears, and waggling her fingers—all after she has invited the other girl to shut her face? Such behavior would try the patience of a saint, and I have never come close to sainthood.”
He laughed and relaxed further. He liked her.
“The thunderstorm was an annoyance,” she continued, setting her spoon down in her empty bowl. “Your daughter was not, however. I hope—oh, I do hope, at the risk of interfering again, that you never think to deal with her by squashing her spirit. She needs a thoroughly stimulating education as well as many and varied and vigorous activities. And she does not need to be told that little girls are to be seen but not heard. There. Now I have become definitely obnoxious.”
The door opened again and the innkeeper removed the empty dishes while his wife and the maid brought in the main course.
“Not obnoxious,” he said when they were alone again. “I appreciate your comments. They reassure me. I am aware that I have a very precious child in keeping, but many people of my acquaintance would add a couple of letters to the description and call her precocious.”
She smiled as she helped herself to vegetables. “She told me you were thinking of sending her to a boarding school,” she said.
“Poor Miss Thompson,” he said. “You cannot escape from your everyday life, can you? A lady of my acquaintance believes school would be good for Georgette, that it would t—Well, that it would tame her. Actually it was the lady’s mother who made the suggestion, but Miss Everly agreed wholeheartedly with her, as she always does. Lady Connaught is a strong-willed woman.”
Miss Everly was a sweet-tempered young lady as well as a very lovely one. Unfortunately she was also ruled by an overbearing mother.
“School may well be the very thing for your daughter,” Miss Thompson said. “Or it may well not be. The school itself would need to be chosen with care, and her own wishes would need to be consulted even though she is only ten years old. In my school, no girl is accepted as a boarder unless she has given her free consent. School is not a jail but rather a portal to freedom, or at least it ought to be in an ideal world. It was my understanding this afternoon and my observation earlier this evening that Georgette is strongly attached to her brother. Do you see her as a bad influence on him? Do you perhaps blame his shyness upon her willingness to shield him and speak for him? Do you believe they need to be separated?”
He considered. And he could hear that very concern being expressed in the gentle, sweet voice of Miss Everly. She had said it in London a month or two ago the evening after he had taken her and his children to Gunter’s for ices. He had feared that perhaps she was right.
“No.” He frowned as he cut into his steak and kidney pudding. “No, I do not, Miss Thompson. Robert will be devastated if Georgette goes away for weeks at a time, and she will be devastated to leave him. But...is it the best thing anyway? Why does no one warn prospective parents of the momentous and torment-provoking decisions that lie ahead of them? But this is most definitely not your problem, and I do apologize again. Tell me about your family. You are going to see them tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she said. “I lived in a village in Gloucestershire with my mother until a few years ago. Both my sisters married, one of them to the local vicar. She is still there. They have three children, two boys and a girl. My other sister returned home after she was widowed. That was when she taught part time at the village school. She was very good at it. The children adored her. Then she remarried and her new husband invited both my mother and me to live with them. My mother was keen to go. I was less so. Being a spinster of very moderate means suited me fine, but only provided it came with independence. Luxury and dependence in my brother-in-law’s very lavish home did not appeal to me at all even though they were offered with graciousness and love. I might have remained alone at the cottage and eked out an even more frugal existence, but it would have upset my mother and my sisters and I do believe I might have been lonely. So I chose to teach—but older girls, whom I dearly love.”
She was a woman of courage, then. How many ladies in her position would have chosen to teach when they might have lived in luxury with relatives who loved them?
“And you?” she asked. “Tell me about your family.”
