Amanda Scott Read Free Page B

coming to recognize as a characteristically elliptical fashion. “Don’t do to coddle boys, Sabrina. They grow up to be men no matter what you do.”
    “I don’t coddle Giles, Miss Lavinia,” said Sabrina, straightening indignantly in her chair. “Really, I do not know how you can say such a thing of me. I am certain Laurence’s school reports can never have been anything special, because he was used to laugh at the cutting things the masters wrote about Oliver. And all they have said about Giles is that he lacks application, whatever that means. Surely there was no reason for Jack to write him a severe scold, as he must have done, for Giles wrote to me that he read only bits of the letter because he didn’t like the tone of it, and I am certain that can be nothing to wonder at. No one would have liked to receive such a letter.”
    “But why is Giles not coming home?” Emily asked.
    “Because,” Sabrina said, “if he does, Jack has said he must have a tutor for the whole of his long vacation. Can you credit it? Keeping poor Oliver short of money and then expending heaven knows how much on a tutor for Giles—”
    “A very strict tutor,” added Miss Lavinia on a note of satisfaction.
    “I see.” Emily applied her attention to her tea for some moments while she turned the matters thus described to her over in her mind. Despite the difference in their ages, she felt that she knew Sabrina well, for they saw each other frequently during the year in London and at other people’s homes, and they were avid correspondents. This last fact was true of the entire Wingrave family, of which Emily was the youngest member. But Sabrina was no doting mother, and until the last few months—until the death of Baron Staithes, in fact—she had rarely written about her children.
    Emily had dutifully sent each one a small gift on the anniversary of his or her birth and at Christmas, and had received formal notes of gratitude in return. She occasionally received stiff, dutiful missives from one or another, including one letter written in Latin by young Giles from Eton that she had submitted to her brother Ned for translation. When the letter had proved to be no more than a copy of one of Caesar’s letters from a Latin textbook, Ned and Emily had composed a satiric reply and sent it off to the boy, hoping to hear from him again, but there had been no response. Thinking about this episode now, she realized she knew very little about her sister’s children. Even Oliver, whom she had seen most often and who was, after all, no more than a few years younger than she, was nearly a stranger. She remembered a boy with eyes like her own, light blue with dark rims around the irises, and with light-brown hair, who had visited Wingrave Hall briefly at infrequent intervals. All she really remembered about him was a mischievous laugh and an avid interest in hunting and shooting.
    “Is Oliver at home now, Sabrina?” she inquired.
    “Yes, of course. Haven’t I just been telling you?”
    “Well, he might have been rusticated and gone to London or even gone sailing in the North Sea like our John did that time he was sent down from Oxford for playing off one of his pranks and Papa was so out-of-reason cross with him,” Emily pointed out.
    “Good gracious, Emily, never put such a notion as that into Oliver’s head,” begged Sabrina. “I don’t know what he will do, though he says he desires to cut some sort of dash and then go into Leicestershire when the hunting begins. Meriden will not hear of it, of course, so it will all be dreadful for me, just as it was when he would not let Dolly go to London in June.”
    “But surely you would not have permitted her to do such a thing either,” Emily said.
    “No, of course not,” Sabrina replied, eyeing her doubtfully, “though I am persuaded that after six months of deep mourning, no one would have been dreadfully shocked if she had gone with me or with her friend Lettie Bennett from Helmsley