The linguist in Sloane notices the "my son's mother" phrase instead of the more obvious "wife" and, considering he wasn't married to Irina Derevko, either, draws the wrong conclusion Nathan's mother was an affair, and the right conclusion she wasn't the much mourned Ms. Grey-Summers.
"No, it never is. You must be proud of them, though. To be able to make their own way abroad after... abandonment... speaks highly of their strength and abilities. But of course, you yourself had to find your own way through life, too, growing up in an orphanage. And now you are responsible for other children. I've only been here for a short time, Scott, but judging by what I saw so far, they seem to have complete confidence in you. It must have made your father proud as well - to imagine his son the captain of such an endangered vessel as this school is."
He uses the metaphor because of Scott's earlier mention that his father was a pilot, but also because fragments of a Victorian poem going through his mind - "we are still captains of our fate" - he can't quite place the quote or the poem's author, though.
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"No, it never is. You must be proud of them, though. To be able to make their own way abroad after... abandonment... speaks highly of their strength and abilities. But of course, you yourself had to find your own way through life, too, growing up in an orphanage. And now you are responsible for other children. I've only been here for a short time, Scott, but judging by what I saw so far, they seem to have complete confidence in you. It must have made your father proud as well - to imagine his son the captain of such an endangered vessel as this school is."
He uses the metaphor because of Scott's earlier mention that his father was a pilot, but also because fragments of a Victorian poem going through his mind - "we are still captains of our fate" - he can't quite place the quote or the poem's author, though.