Jasmine did not discover all this about her aunt at their first meeting; the conversation then was crammed with the commonplace of family news; and how Aunt Ellen would have resented the notion that any news about the Grants could be described as commonplace! She might have gone on talking until tea-time if Edred's continuous kicking of the leg of her father's favourite table had not suggested a diversion in the form of Jasmine's long-delayed introduction to the Dean. She had hesitated to interfere directly with her son's harmless if rather irritating little pleasure; but the varnish was beginning to show signs of Edred's boots, and she announced that, although Uncle Arnold was working, he would no doubt in the circumstances forgive them for disturbing him.
Jasmine smiled pleasantly at the implied compliment, not realizing that the circumstances were the table's, not hers.
"I say, need I go?" asked Edred. He dreaded these visits to the study, because they sometimes ended in his being detained to copy out notes for his father.
Edred dashed off with a whoop of delight, turning round in the doorway to shout to Jasmine that he would be in the garden with Why and Ethel should she wish presently to be shown the swans.
"Poor boy," sighed Aunt Ellen when he was gone, and upon Jasmine's asking what was the matter with him, she told her that he had just failed for Osborne.
"It's such a blow to him," she murmured in a plaintive voice that was ridiculously out of keeping with her rockbound appearance. "If he had passed, he had made up his mind to become an admiral, and now I suppose we must send him back to school in September. Poor little boy, he's quite heartbroken. I've had to be very gentle with him lately."
Jasmine supposed it might be tactless to observe that Edred showed no signs of heartbreak, and instead of commenting she enquired sympathetically what Ethelred was going to do.
"Ah, poor Ethelred's a great problem. He wants to be an engineer, and really he is very clever with his fingers; but his father is quite opposed to anything in the nature of technical education until he's had an ordinary education. I think myself it is a pity, but Uncle Arnold is quite firm on that point. Ethelred was at Mr. Arkwright's school until Easter, but the school doctor wrote and told us that he thought the air on the east coast was too bracing for him. In fact, he insisted on his leaving for the dear boy's own sake."