“But it is fatal to let a child behave like this,” she said. “It is the end of all discipline. What would come to the world if no one were punished?” I said that Rose would not lack punishment. Her shame in not being able to remain at Brighton was punishment. She was not proud of herself at all, I said, even though she couldn’t do anything else but run away. “But suppose every child ran away!” said Miss Saltoun. “What would the world come to!” “It would probably be very good for the world,” I said. “Because only children with character have the pluck to take such a step.” “No one has ever run away from Osborne House before,” said Miss Saltoun. “And probably no one ever will again,” I said. “It will be very damaging to me,” she protested, “if it gets to be known, as of course it must do. Of what did Rose complain?” I said that I hadn’t asked her. “Not asked her!” Miss Saltoun exclaimed. And I could see her swiftly putting two and two together and realizing that it was my deplorable indulgence that was at the back of everything. “No,” I said. “She merely said that she could not stay and had therefore come home.” “And you allow that? Condone that? It’s too amazing! Is every caprice of a child like this to satisfy you?” “I don’t think she is capricious,” I said. “I agree with you that the occurrence is unfortunate. I wish it had never been. I wish Rose had not gone to school at all, anywhere. But I would much rather—even at the risk of being unfair to you—that she were not interrogated.” Miss Saltoun kept her temper under fair control, but she could not help indicating that she was glad that all her pupils had not such impossible parents or foster-parents, and that on the whole she was of the opinion that she was well out of it. Nor did I feel particularly pleased with the position I had been forced to take up. It was not too civil, and I doubt if it was just to the schoolmistress. But Rose was my first consideration, and I knew with crystal clearness that no possible good to either could come out of a cross-examination of her by Miss Saltoun. Miss Saltoun would have been hostile and suspicious, utterly incapable of understanding the child’s fundamental honesty and courage, nor would she have had any belief that a child’s antipathies, a child’s dislike of Dr. Fell, need not be less sincere or important than an adult’s. To her, children were immature beings to be taught deportment and the length of rivers; to me, Rose was an individual, separate and complete, with private sensitivenesses and loyalties that must not be harmed. Miss Saltoun caught her train, and I drove over to Mrs. O’Gorman to fetch Rose back. I had sent her there for the day, to be out of the way and also to be in the company of the most sensible woman I knew. I found them turning over old volumes of “Punch,” and having sent Rose off to help Julia in some capacity or other, Mrs. O’Gorman turned to me with a smile on her mischievous old face.