At that time he was going through a course of Jane Austen, for whose works he had an enthusiastic admiration, and I remember thinking that he was rather like a Jane Austen person himself, and that she would have "done him" uncommonly well. The book he read was _Pride and Prejudice_, most witty and delightful to read in later life. But children miss the real savour of its caustic wit, and I know that it was as much over Fiammetta’s head as over mine, even though she was so infinitely better versed in literature of all kinds than I. At seven Uncle Edward ceased, placing a marker in the page as he closed the book. "Perhaps," he said, "Fiammetta already knows this book by heart and can tell me what comes next." Fiammetta arose hastily from her chair with evident relief: "Oh, no," she said frankly, "that’s not the sort of book one knows by heart. I don’t think it’s particularly interesting—do you?" "I think it is a masterpiece," Uncle Edward replied, almost breathless with astonishment. "I hope that in a year or two Viola and Hermione will know it, and many others by the incomparable Jane, as well as they know their multiplication table." "Do they know that awfully well?" asked Fiammetta. "I don’t; the sevens and the nines are so muddling—my daddie quite agrees with me. May we go away now?" In all my intercourse with Fiammetta, the thing that never failed of its joy and wonder was the way she nonplussed grown-up people. They seemed to have no suitable snub ready for her. She was not in the least impertinent, but neither was she deferential to their superior intelligence. In fact, she made us question sometimes whether they were so very intelligent. She lived on terms of such absolute equality with her father, such understanding affection existed between them, that it never occurred to Fiammetta to conceal her opinions or to pretend she liked things merely to please people who happened to be several years older than herself. She was quite prepared to show Uncle Edward good reasons for her lack of interest in _Pride and Prejudice_ as frankly as she afterwards gave them to me. But she had no opportunity, for I remember Aunt Alice hustled us out into the garden with almost unseemly haste, and we were set to play golf croquet, in which game Viola and Hermione excelled, I was only moderately good, and Fiammetta couldn’t play at all. Naturally she did not enjoy herself much.