Then, as his girls began to come of age when they
must leave the convent in which they were regularly interned
during his years of active service, Colonel Powys retired from the
army with the necessity of making a home for them. It happened
that the Ashburnhams had never seen any of the Powys girls,
though, whenever the four parents met in London, Edward
Ashburnham was always of the party. He was at that time
twenty-two and, I believe, almost as pure in mind as Leonora
herself. It is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence
untouched in this world.
That was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to
the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a
particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar
aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories. At
Sandhurst he had just kept out of the way of that sort of thing. He
was keen on soldiering, keen on mathematics, on land-surveying,
on politics and, by a queer warp of his mind, on literature. Even
when he was twenty-two he would pass hours reading one of
Scott's novels or the Chronicles of Froissart. Mrs Ashburnham
considered that she was to be congratulated, and almost every
week she wrote to Mrs Powys, dilating upon her satisfaction.
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