class="pnext">I ignored my brother and continued: 'My knowledge of flowers is extensive, and I know two bits of history and——'

'Could we have the two bits now without waiting for the novel?'

'Oh, certainly, Uncle Jasper.' (I always like to oblige my family when I can). 'The first is the one that everybody remembers: William I., 1066, married Matilda of Flanders, but I have had an expensive education, as daddy often says, so I know, too, that William II., 1087, never married.'

'Dear me,' said my uncle, again with his indulgent-to-the-tame-gorilla look.

Daddy laughed and got up. 'Well, I should think it would be a most interesting book, though how you will work in the two bits of history with the fauna of the South Pole, influenza, and ski-ing passes the comprehension of a mere male thing!'

Then he kissed me for some extraordinary reason and said that he expected I should get to know some other things as I went along, and Uncle Jasper blew his nose violently, and Ross observed that I was a funny little ass. After that we went home.

Father had a choir practice or something after dinner, and Ross said he had to see a man about a dog (he can't possibly want another), so I retired to my own special domain to start my novel.

I was rummaging in my handkerchief box for a pencil when Nannie came in with a ream of sermon paper and a quart bottle of ink, followed by a procession of servants bearing the New English Dictionary as far as the letter T, which Daddy thought might be useful. In the course of the next hour Ross sent up a wet towel and a can marked 'Midnight Oil,' and a note arrived from Uncle Jasper to say that he had omitted to mention that it was better 'to resolutely avoid' split infinitives (whatever they are), and that if I felt bound at times to write of things I didn't know, it was quite a good tip to shove in a quotation from the best authority on the subject, and that his library was at my disposal at any time. He said, too, that he had a spare copy of the Record Interpreter, if it would be of any use.

My uncle's jokes are like that; no ordinary person can see them at all.

But two can play at 'pulling legs,' so I sewed up the legs of my brother's pyjamas, put the wet towel and the can of oil in his bed, and the dictionary in father's, and, having poured the quart of ink in their two water-jugs, I sat down with great contentment to fulfil my life's ambition.

I thought over the subjects on which my knowledge was irrefutable, but a novel inspired by any one of them seemed impossible, and by 10.30 p.m. I was suffering from bad brain fag. Then Nannie came in to brush my hair, so I confided my troubles to her, as I always do.

'I seem to be a most ignorant person, Nannie; the only thing I really know about is the family.'

'Well, write a book about that, dearie, I'm sure it's mad enough.'

'But then there wouldn't be a plot.'

'No more there is in most people's lives, not the women's, anyway.'

'Has your life been very dull, darling?' I asked.

'My life,' said Nannie solemnly, 'has been one large hole with bits of stocking round that I have had to try and draw together.'

When Ross came up his remarks about his bed were of so sulphurous a character that I swear I could almost see the brimstone blowing under my door. And in the silent watches of the night I decided that my book shall be about the family, from the time it was born to the day it was buried. Surely something in the nature of a plot will turn up in between.

CHAPTER II

To begin at the beginning. When I was waiting to be born I must have run up to God and said,—

'Please, could this little boy come, too?'

And perhaps He laughed and answered,—

'Oh, certainly, Miss Fotheringham, as you make such a point of it,' for Ross and I are twins, and we have lived all our life in this little Devonshire village that is tucked into a hollow in the hills. Daddy is the parson here and Uncle Jasper the lord of the manor. But this place is not 'clear cut,' as Uncle Jasper says my 'background' ought to be. It is just a soft jumble of ferns and flowers, of misty mornings and high hedges, of sunshine, of shadows and sweet scents, of hills and dales, of all the countless things that go to make the village so lovely and so baffling.

I think Devonshire is like a beautiful but elusive woman. You think you know her very well, you walk about her lanes and woods, but when you think to capture her soul she ripples away from you in one of her little rushing torrents, just as a woman escapes from the lover who thought he had almost caught and kissed her!

This old-world Vicarage stands in a large and fragrant garden opposite the entrance to the park. If you walk through the great gates and up the long avenue you come to the Elizabethan manor house where my aunt and uncle live with their son, Eustace, and all the family retainers.

Oh! and they are a priceless couple. He isn't interested in anything 'later' than the Middle Ages, she in nothing 'earlier' than Heaven. But their lives are most harmonious, and together they 'wallow in old churches,' he absorbed in aumbries and piscinas, she in the prayer and praise part. Then, perhaps, he'll call her,—

'Constance, look at this floating cusp!'

She admires his treasure, her eyes limpid and sweet with saints and angels, and thinks, 'Why, if I stopped praising the very stones here would cry out,' and so they both take a deep interest in the moulding for quite different reasons.

It's the same with meals. He's always late—she's always patient. She doesn't try to be, she is. He'll come in half an hour after the time for luncheon. 'Constance, I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I'm late, I hope you haven't waited. I found such a fascinating bit of Norman work in that church.' She knows he doesn't mean to be discourteous, but that he's got simply no idea of time, while she is always thinking of eternity, so she says gently, 'It doesn't matter, Jasper, if you hurry now, dear. I always prefer to wait.'

She is such a stately beauty, such a very great lady. She makes all the other women feel their gloves are shabby. Her white hair shines so that I always think it's 'glistering,' and her nose is quite straight, the kind you see in a cathedral on a stone archbishop, and her clothes are 'scrummy,' so really beautiful that you hardly realise them. They are part of her, and she harmonises with the background. Her tweeds are just the heather she walks about in, and at night it's only her lovely old lace that shows you where her neck leaves off and her shimmering cream satin gown begins.

Uncle Jasper worships the ground she walks on, while for her, 'Jasper' comes just after God.

But although my uncle thinks her so adorable, he can't keep even his compliments quite