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!’