What that young man
wants is someone to tell him what he's got to do, and then let there
be an end of it. And the sooner that handy boy turns up the better.
I don't mind what he talks. All I want him to do is to clean knives
and fetch water and chop wood. At the worst I'll get that home to
him by pantomime. For conversation he can wait till you come down."
That is the gist of what she said. It didn't run exactly as I have
put it down. There were points at which I interrupted, but Robina
never listens; she just talks on, and at the end she assumes that, as
a matter of course, you have come round to her point of view, and
persuading her that you haven't means beginning the whole thing over
again.
She said I hadn't time to talk, and that she would write and tell me
everything. Dick also said he would write and tell me everything;
and that if I felt moved to send them down a hamper--the sort of
thing that, left to themselves, Fortnum & Mason would put together
for a good-class picnic, say, for six persons--I might rely upon it
that nothing would be wasted.
Veronica, by my desire, walked with me to the end of the lane. I
talked to her very seriously. Her difficulty was that she had not
been blown up. Had she been blown up, then she would have known
herself she had done wrong. In the book it is the disobedient child
that is tossed by the bull. The child that has been sent with the
little basket to visit the sick aunt may be right in the bull's way.
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