Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/80

 an ugly duckling, morally ugly, at any rate from Laura's limited point of view. Campaspe considered what she herself would do with Consuelo, and with no difficulty extracted the answer from her consciousness: she would do nothing at all. With her there would have been no problem in connection with the rearing of an unusual daughter; she would have reared her as she had brought up her own two conventional and conservative sons, by permitting her, within limits prescribed by Campaspe's own comfort, to bring up herself. This, the musing lady assured herself, Laura would never do, and so the duckling eventually, she shrewdly guessed, would cackle or bleat, or whatever ducklings did, out of Laura's jurisdiction. The duckling, already, it would seem, had developed sufficient initiative to pick up a paragon in a flower-shop. God knows, Campaspe added to herself, what train of amusing circumstances might have followed had we rediscovered him. The unsuccessful outcome of that adventure, however, did not present itself to her in retrospect as entirely unfortunate. Basil, for one thing, would have proved a disturbing presence, disturbing in his passive acceptance of whatever might have occurred, and now Basil, after his few necessary days in town, had been packed off to school again. In spite of this reasonable resignation in regard to the inevitable, Campaspe could not deny that her failure to encounter O'Grady had annoyed her considerably at the time, but she realized