Like missing a step

I love Elizabeth Goudge's books. By modern standards, they're awfully purple at times, but her evocation of place is breathtaking and her love of words shines through. I was rereading the first of the Damerosehay trilogy, The Bird in the Tree, though, set in 1938, and came across this little gem of snobbery with one of the boys of the house telling his uncle that he and his brother have been building dug-outs in case of air raids;

"Tommy hopes there will be. We've made one dug-out already, behind the rubbish heap in the kitchen garden. It's a bit smelly but then it's only for the servants."

And does the uncle reprove his nephew? Nope.

Sigh.