“I must tell Mum that,” Dad said. “How she’ll laugh! I dare say she’d not like it if I was under her feet six days a week instead of only one!”
Oswald was back with a bucket almost full of sea water. He must have been carrying it very carefully so as to avoid spilling. “Tell Mum what?” he asked.
“Patsy wants me to be a minister so I’ll only have to work on Sundays!”
Oswald didn’t laugh. “I’m not sure Mum would find that funny,” he said.
“No, maybe you’re right,” Dad agreed.
“Patsy’s not a baby any more. She should know that ministers work hard visiting the sick and … writing their sermons and…” it was clear that Oswald’s imagination was at an end.
Dad laughed again. “It’s all right old boy. I won’t say anything to Mum. You’re probably right that she wouldn’t see the funny side.”
“It’s just that she wants us to be like Lady Leverside’s children,” Oswald said.
Dad pulled Patsy onto his lap and patted the sand for Oswald to sit next to him, which he did, setting down the heavy bucket. “She wants the best for you,” he said. “For both of you. That’s why she wants you to dress nicely and speak properly and all of that. Your Mum worked for Lady Leverside before we were married, and that’s where she learned to take care of children. So that’s how she knows how to make bathing costumes and recite poetry and all that. I didn’t have the advantages you’re getting. Your Gran didn’t know any of the things you’re having the chance to learn from your Mum.”
Patsy smiled at the thought of comfortable old Gran reciting poetry. Gran cooked on the fire and made the best toffee in the world, but she wasn’t a poetry sort of person somehow.
“But, while it’s good that you have those advantages, this is very important, I want you to know that you’re just as good as Lord Leverside’s children, as good as any children in the world. You can do as much as they can, more. You can do better than them. You can go far and achieve great things.”
“But they’re honourable children,” Patsy said. “The Honourable Letitia and the Honourable Ralph. We’re not like them. Mum says we’re not.”
“She says she doesn’t want us to be common,” Oswald said.
“Like when you were playing football with the boys and you came home and said—” Patsy started eagerly, but Oswald punched her arm.
“It’s not fair repeating tales,” he said.
Dad looked at him reproachfully. “It’s better than hitting a girl, and one three years younger than you. That’s just the kind of thing I’m talking about, where you have the chance to learn better and you should take it.”
“Sorry,” Oswald said. “But honestly, Dad, she shouldn’t repeat things like that.”
“No, Patsy, your brother is right. If he said something he shouldn’t and Mum punished him, then that should be the end of it.”
“Sorry,” Patsy said. “I didn’t mean to sneak.” She put out her hand to Oswald to shake, which he did.
“But coming back to the other thing,” Dad said, “The fact that they’re The Honourable and you’re just Master and Miss means nothing. You’re every bit as good as they are, and you can go as far as they can. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
“Adam!” Patsy said, quickly before Oswald could answer such an easy riddle. “And Eve was the lady!”
Oswald laughed. “She doesn’t understand, Dad.”
“But you do, don’t you? You know what I’m saying. Look at it this way, did Lady Leverside bring up her children herself? No, she chose your mother to do it. You’re having the same upbringing they had.”
One of the other children came to ask Dad a question about the pulpit and he got up to help. Patsy sat still, crinkling her toes and feeling the sand scrunch up under them. Lady Leverside’s children had seemed as far above her as the sun and the moon. Mum never said Patsy was better than they were at anything, never even as good. It was always “The Honourable Letitia would never have spoken with her mouth open…” or “forgotten her cushion…” or “come downstairs with her hair unbrushed.” Patsy was used to thinking of them as paragons. She considered Dad’s view that she was as good as they were, and potentially even better. Yet she knew they had six of everything, all of the best, and if they grew out of any of their clothes they had more right away, ordered from John Lewis’s. She and Oswald only had one set of best clothes at a time, and only two other sets of clothes, and they were forever outgrowing them or tearing them. She tore hers climbing trees and Oswald tore his playing football or fighting with boys.
“When I’m thirteen they’re going to send me away to school,” Oswald said, plopping down on the sand beside her.