Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 126

The best-laid plans. Rory claimed Flora’s tea service and performed a very clever trick with overturned cups and disappearing sugar lumps, Flora was only interested in Rory’s Erector Set, and Ulick remained disappointingly aloof from his fort. It would have remained in its box if Lightfoot and Doopie hadn’t begun playing with it.

Violet gave me a calendar.

“So you can organize your time,” she said. “You’ll see the weeks laid out before you and be able to think how best to fill your days productively.”

Rory gave me a rough-hewn letter rack made in his handicrafts’ class, Lightfoot gave me a coffret of candy, and Flora gave me a pink satin letter M, stitched quite nicely and filled with padding.

Violet said, “How clever. Is it a scented sachet?”

“No,” said Flora, “it’s an em. We made it out of old ploomers.”

Melhuish’s sister Elspeth and the Rear Admiral Salty Laird looked in during the afternoon. Elspeth said, “Now Flora, are ye looking forward to being a big girl and going to Hope House?”

Flora closed her eyes. She does that when you say something she doesn’t want to hear. She gets that from Doopie.

Rory said, “You’ll like it when you get there, Flora. You’ll make friends. And have cocoa every night. I used not to want to go to school, but you get used to it, you see, and then it’s really good fun.”

She said, “Then I’ll come to your school.”

Ulick said, “You can’t. You’re a girl.”

She said, “Well I shan’t stay at Hope House. I shall run away.”

Elspeth said, “Do ye know what happens to girls who run away, Flora? The bogeyman comes after them and they’re never seen again.”

Doopie and Lightfoot both got her with the peashooter cannons.

Ulick said, “I really wonder why we’re bothering with all this. Why not have her taught at home until it’s time for her to be finished? That’s what they did with Pentlow’s sister and she’s now out and practically engaged to Gore-Cummings. Education seems to me to be quite wasted on girls.”