Well, it used to happen in real life - I know a British lady who was born in Calcutta and shipped off to England for boarding school at just about that age. As you can imagine, she HATED it.Robert Houghton wrote: Very enjoyable story though - except I hate to think how I would have felt if my parents had sent me to boarding school at 7!
I liked the way Enid got the moral across - it would have been better for Timothy to have told the truth in the first place, and he wouldn't have been made to get rid of his mouse after all if he did - while portraying him with such sympathy that we can understand very well why he chooses to do what he does. As an author, she nearly always manages to make a good moral point without being rigidly black-and-white or too heavy-handed about it, which is one aspect of her writing style that I've always appreciated.