The eldest two nodded again warily while Grace did not know how to respond, so simply shuffled in her seat.
“So what changed?” It was a perfectly reasonable question and one Georgie had pondered incessantly herself—almost as much as she had pondered her peculiar overreaction to the captain. “Why were you able to focus and behave last week and not this week?”
An odd look passed between the eldest two, which both quickly quashed to a shrug.
“Come on now, you are obviously very intelligent children who were, while boisterous, still a delight to teach right up until the end of Friday, and perfectly lovely company on Saturday morning and all day Sunday when we had no lessons. Yet this week you have been… well, frankly… a nightmare. Belligerent, lazy, defiant, disruptive, and so disengaged that every single day has felt like three weeks since, and I think we’d all much prefer to pull out our own teeth than be stuck here together like this in perpetuity.”
Another odd look passed between Felix and Marianne. One that confirmed there was something else afoot than them merely testing her patience.
“Well, I suppose if we cannot have a frank and open conversation about the problem to see how we can all collectively fix it, things shall just have to stay as they are then until your parents return to rescue you from the endless torture of silent book learning…” She turned to wipe the blackboard with a duster, then picked up her chalk. “Back to our dull English comprehension…”
“We don’t have any incentive to behave,” said Marianne, sounding like the most spoiled child who ever lived. “And we are not used to this way of learning.” She gestured around. “We do not have a classroom at home, and I so miss home.”
“An incentive?” She sympathized with the whole classroom argument as this change to their usual routine probably did feel constricting and alien, and she empathized that they were homesick because she missed being at Miss P’s. Being here in this lovely but strange house with all these new people was too reminiscent of her nomadic, rootless childhood to feel comfortable. The loss, albeit temporarily, of the reassuring security of the only home she had known since the age of sixteen was most disconcerting, made more so because she was simultaneously missing the daily presence of an irritating,wholly unsuitable man she did not want to be missing. But still— Georgie had never heard the like.
“Something to make behaving worth our while,” clarified Marianne, as if her solution was a magical wand.
“As in a gift or payment of some sort?”
“Yes, precisely, as that is what we are used to,” said Felix, nodding as if his sister’s explanation for their shoddy behavior was perfectly reasonable. “Uncle Harry forgot to promise us anything to behave this week, so perhaps, as we haven’t seen him, if you did…”
“I see.” Although she didn’t—unless… “Why would you expect a material incentive from either me or your uncle to do anything?”
“Because Uncle Harryalwayspromises something whenever we come to visit.” This also came from Felix. “Always.”
“Right…” And because things were beginning to fall into place, she pulled a thoughtful face as if contemplating the merits of a similar arrangement with them. While she heartily approved of the odd reward here and there for consistent hard work or doing something truly exceptional, she also knew that rewarding the mundane was a slippery slope. “What sorts of incentives work best for Uncle Harry to ensure he gets the best out of you?” She smiled rather than frowned because she wanted to prize more information out of them.
“Well, last week it was ice cream,” said Marianne, unaware that she had just opened Pandora’s box. “As much as we could eat at Gunther’s if we behaved for you all week and didn’t immediately frighten you away—but usually it’s a sixpence or a shilling if it’s just to get us to behave for an afternoon.”
Clearly there was a sliding scale to the bartering system, and they were used to their palms being greased.
“Or some sweets,” added Grace shyly. “Toffees are my favorite.”The last was added hopefully as if she believed Georgie might immediately go out and buy her some for simply mentioning it. “But Felix and Marianne prefer licorice.”
“Do they indeed?” Suddenly all the silent, cryptic looks between the siblings last week made sense. As did their forced compliance. For three children who were not at all used to traditional schooling, they had certainly settled into it fast enough. She should have known that that was too good to be true, when every class of well-behaved pupils at Miss P’s had always tested her boundaries first. Proper respect always came at a cost, after all. “Out of interest, how long has he beenincentivizingyou?”
“Always,” said Marianne. “He’s always liked to buy us things.”
“We used to get some splendid things when he came back from a long voyage. He brought me back a spear from Africa once.” Felix’s face lit up at the memory as if that dangerous piece of inappropriateness was the best gift he had ever received in his life. “Mama has locked it away though—until I grow up. In case I accidentally kill something with it.” His furrowed brows suggested he thought that a grave injustice.
“He once bought me ballet shoes from the Bolshoi.” Marianne’s expression was dreamy. “I loved those shoes.”
“So much they fell apart,” added Felix with a curled lip of disapproval. “She pirouetted everywhere for six whole months. It was very annoying.”
“I love my dolls’ house.” Grace was eager to share the captain’s largesse too. “Uncle Harry fetched it all the way from Amsterdam. I would have brought it with me here, but it’s too big to travel.”
“Don’t forget all the puppets and the theater.” Marianne again, with a grin at her brother. “We each get a new puppet for every birthday and Christmas. I got a ballerina marionette last Christmas, Gracegot a pony that makes clippety-cloppety noises when it moves, and Felix got a spider.”
“It even has hair,” said Grace with a shudder, “so Mama has expressly forbidden him from chasing me with it, as he knows that I don’t like them.”
“What lucky children you are. It sounds as though your uncle has thoroughly spoiled you all for years.” And good gracious, that new knowledge did further unwelcome things to Georgie’s heart. A heart she was determined to keep hardened against him but which still seemed rebelliously determined to quicken for the dratted man instead.
Felix nodded. “Mama always says that it makes Uncle Harry happy to buy us things. She said it was his way of making up for spending so much time far away across the sea and being too busy to come home to visit us in Devon.”
And they had clearly continued to use that generosity against him.
What clever and enterprising little rascals they truly were—and what a well-intentioned but blithering idiot the captain had been. He had the gall to question her untraditional approach to child rearing when his superior “rigor” basically involved out-and-out bribery! If Captain Kincaid had been home now, she’d have marched to his study and given him a piece of her mind for such misguided but flagrant stupidity.
Did the captain not know that if you gave children an inch, they took a mile, and that they would ruthlessly exploit any chink they saw in the armor? Those things did not make these children bad because they werechildrenand that was precisely what children did if they did not know where the boundaries lay. But as an adult, and apparently as a great leader of men, Captain Kincaid should have known better.Instead, thanks to a combination of guilt and most likely exasperation, he had effectively surrendered all the control he had over these tarnished but resourceful little cherubs because they now ruled his roost.
