Parents and Children by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page B

if the arrangement were necessary to his purpose.
    â€˜Oh, that is what you are doing,’ said Eleanor, without more idea than James of what this was. ‘But you will spoil books if you do that. Did Miss Mitford know you were doing it?’
    â€˜No,’ said James, with an habitual movement of nervous guilt that came in well.
    â€˜Give it back to her, and go and get ready to go out with Father. Ah, that sends you off like an arrow from the bow.’
    Eleanor smiled after her son, whose movement did suggest this simile, and turned to the governess.
    â€˜He is developing better now, isn’t he, Miss Mitford?’
    â€˜Yes, he is, in his own way,’ said Miss Mitford, meaning what she said.
    â€˜It is a pity he is not better fitted for school,’ said Eleanor, unaware that some of her son’s tendencies stood him in good stead there. ‘I wish I understood children as you do. It would be such a help to me.’
    Miss Mitford smiled in an absent manner, thinking of the shocks that Eleanor would sustain if this could be the case, and wondering if she had forgotten her own childhood or had an abnormal one. Eleanor saw her children’s lives as so much fuller and less constrained than her own, that her own early temptations could have no place in them.
    â€˜Well, I must go down to my husband. I seem to spend my life in moving from one department of my family to another,’ she said, smiling at Miss Mitford with a suggestion of the difference between their lots. ‘I hope you will do as you like this afternoon, Miss Mitford.’
    Miss Mitford did not reassure her, though she might have done so. She settled herself with a book which she did not leave in theway of her pupils, and a box of sweets which she dealt with in the same manner. She was a fairly satisfied person, with a knowledge of books which was held to be natural in her life, and a knowledge of people which would have been held to be impossible, and was really inevitable. She had a carelessness of opinion which protected her against the usual view of her life, and had pity rather than envy of Eleanor, whom she saw as a less contented being. Her influence over her pupils was not much the worse, that she accepted life as it was, and allowed them to see it. She would not speak to James of his duplicity, but he would derive some discomfort from her silence.
    Eleanor went to the study she shared with her husband, and waited for the latter to join her. He was still at the luncheon table, whence Regan had departed and her grandsons been dismissed. An allowance of talk without boys or women was Sir Jesse’s acknowledged right, and was daily accorded him. When Fulbert left his father for his wife, he was reminded of his promise to his daughter and informed of the extension of the scheme. He took his stand in the doorway, with his watch in his hand, possibly having faith in the theory that the memory is stronger in youth.
    â€˜They should not keep their father waiting,’ said Eleanor, moving to the bell. ‘They must not take your attention as a matter of course. Why should you think about them?’
    Fulbert could produce no reason why he should give a thought to his offspring, and the summons brought them running downstairs in a manner that suggested that this was not a mutual attitude.
    â€˜Why are you so late?’ said Eleanor. ‘I should have thought you would be anxious to start, when you were to go out with Father.’
    â€˜We have been ready for some time,’ said Venice. ‘We did not know when we were to come down.’
    â€˜Oh, that is what it was. Well, another time it will be better to be in the hall. Then there will be no question about your being ready and waiting.’
    The capacity for waiting assumed in the children, perhaps without much attention to heredity, was proved for someminutes longer; and then the party set off, with the girls on their father’s arms, and James