A Woman's Estate Read Online Free PDF

to leave you to
your own devices. He’s a bachelor, no children of his own, and I shouldn’t
think he has much interest in them.”
    “I’m glad of that,” Abigail said, sighing with relief. “I
know that Victor will have a lot to learn—and so will I—but I don’t want anyone
sneering at him.”
    Anne Baring laughed. “I don’t think anyone will sneer at
Victor, Abby. Boys are much the same whether—”
    A loud crash from somewhere outside the open windows of the
small drawing room in which they were sitting interrupted her. Abigail jumped
at the noise, but her hostess merely shrugged her shoulders and then laughed
again when guilty whispers drifted in.
    “I suspect mine are teaching yours cricket,” Anne sighed,
“and that must have been one of the windows in the servants’ hall that was
broken. How fortunate that William should be home convalescing from measles.”
    Abigail started to apologize, but Anne laughed again and
shook her head and then grew serious, coming back to what she felt was more
important. “Really, it is just as well that Francis’ father did not survive
very much longer. If Victor had come to England five or six years from now, it
would have been more difficult for him.”
    “Francis did teach Victor to ride and was starting to teach
him to handle a gun,” Abigail offered. “But, of course there was no land, and
I-I felt that all in all it was better for Victor to be in school, even though
he missed some of what Francis could teach him—”
    “I agree with you completely,” Baring broke in kindly, to
spare her the embarrassment of admitting that she dared not allow her son too
much contact with his father, lest Victor pick up the notion that Francis’ bad
habits were to be emulated. “But give the boy a few months to run free on the
estate before you send him off to school again, if that is what you decide to
do. But I must warn you that there are only a few suitable schools, and it is
not always easy to obtain a place. There Sir Arthur might be helpful, and I
will do what I can too, of course. However, there are excellent private tutors
available if you prefer that Victor be educated at home.”
    “I don’t know,” Abigail confessed.
    “My goodness,” Anne protested, “Abby’s only just arrived,
and I imagine she had a great deal to do and to think about besides Victor’s
schooling.”
    “Of course,” Baring agreed, smiling at his wife and then
turning to Abigail, “and with Gallatin tied to the Treasury Department in Washington,
everything must have fallen on your shoulders, my dear. In a way it is very
fortunate that you were not able to come any sooner. Your arrival at the end of
the London Season will give you a chance to become acquainted with our ways—not
that your own are not charming, but—”
    “‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’,“ Abigail interrupted,
smiling. “I have every intention of obeying that excellent maxim and never saying
‘But in America, we do such and so, and it is much better that way’, even if I
must bite my tongue quite in half to keep it still.”
    Both Baring and his wife burst out laughing. “Do you find
our ways that awful?” he asked, while Anne cried, “Oh, I know just what
you mean.”
    Abigail laughed, too. “And I agree completely with
Alexander, although he was too tactful to say it outright, that the best place
for me is in the country where I can grow accustomed, with the least wear and
tear on my nerves and reputation.”
    “That is not what I meant at all,” Baring protested, shaking
his head at Abigail’s provocative sniff. “I meant that you will have a chance
to meet the county families—”
    “Especially those who do not come to London and cannot
recount your faux pas,” Anne put in mischievously. “Alex made me
practice on them, too.”
    “ You ,” her husband said with awful emphasis,
“practiced on my innocent family—and enchanted them so completely that they
never had the heart to correct