Robina talked, I should say, for a quarter of an hour. By the time
she had done, it appeared to me rather a beautiful idea. Dick's
vacation had just commenced. For the next three months there would
be nothing else for him to do but--to employ his own expressive
phrase--"rot round." In any event, it would be keeping him out of
mischief. Veronica's governess was leaving. Veronica's governess
generally does leave at the end of about a year. I think sometimes
of advertising for a lady without a conscience. At the end of a
year, they explain to me that their conscience will not allow them to
remain longer; they do not feel they are earning their salary. It is
not that the child is not a dear child, it is not that she is stupid.
Simply it is--as a German lady to whom Dick had been giving what he
called finishing lessons in English, once put it--that she does not
seem to be "taking any." Her mother's idea is that it is "sinking
in." Perhaps if we allowed Veronica to lie fallow for awhile,
something might show itself. Robina, speaking for herself, held that
a period of quiet usefulness, away from the society of other silly
girls and sillier boys, would result in her becoming a sensible
woman. It is not often that Robina's yearnings take this direction:
to thwart them, when they did, seemed wrong.
We had some difficulty with the Little Mother. That these three
babies of hers will ever be men and women capable of running a six-
roomed cottage appears to the Little Mother in the light of a
fantastic dream.
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