Meeting Mrs McVeigh

[pne]

I dropped Amy off at the kindergarten an hour later this morning because Stella had a doctor's appointment at noon and so would be an hour late picking her up.

That meant Mrs McVeigh was already there when I arrived and I had the chance to speak to her briefly.

At first I thought she was American; I obviously still haven't got used to the concept of rhotic accents in the British Isles. (See also this old entry where I was disappointed by an actor with a rhotic accent playing Dumbledore.) But no, she's from Ireland.

She said Amy will occasionally talk to her in one-word sentences, but very quietly, and usually not at all. Which fits: she's pretty shy around people she doesn't know (yet) at the best of times, and she seems especially reluctant to use English with people other than me.

Whether that is because she's unsure about her command of the language, or because she feels it's a language to be used only to me, or what, I don't know, but it's certainly something I've noticed.

Ah well. Let's see whether she'll open up to Virginia (as the children call her—they're on first-name terms with all the teachers there) eventually.

(She's certainly become more open and daring since she's started kindergarten.)