If she was to be indeed his son as well as his daughter, she must from the first be accustomed to boyish as well as to girlish ways.
This, in that she was an only child, was not a difficult matter to accomplish.

Had she had brothers and sisters, matters of her sex would soon have found their own level.
There was one person who objected strongly to any deviation from the conventional rule of a girl's education.

This was Miss Laetitia Rowly, who took after a time, in so far as such a place could be taken, that of the child's mother.

Laetitia Rowly was a young aunt of Squire Rowly of Norwood; the younger sister of his father and some sixteen years his own senior.

When the old Squire's second wife had died, Laetitia, then a conceded spinster of thirty-six, had taken possession of the young Margaret.