This charming exchange is from a favourite children’s book, discovered and devoured when already a so-called grown up.

I liked the child owning up in guilt to a shameful act, and the adult’s sneaky response.  Let it be said that Ambrose is a dream uncle who educates his nephews and niece at home, in the company of an owl who coughs up fur-balls when indignant.

‘I did something dreadful,’ said Nan, and she found she was thankful to burst out with it.  ‘I read somebody else’s letters.’

 

‘Most reprehensible,’ said Uncle Ambrose with interest.  ‘Whose? And what was in them?’

Source: Elizabeth Goudge, The Runaways (London: Hesperus Press, 2013), p. 173

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