But besides the stories, the interminable stories that a child loves, of other little boys and girls, there was endless amusement in the grown-ups, the drooping ladies and _Mr. Mantalini_ gentlemen, the family groups with pig-tailed children, the crinolines and the bustles, the whiskers and the ringlets, and the pork-pie hats of all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandfathers and great-grandmothers of Justin. It was very interesting: and she learned to refer to them with an air of intimate recollection that staggered Justin one day, when, sprawling by the fire with a college friend and _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, he told a story, quite a good story, of an _émigré_ who had married a great-aunt or other of his own. A voice from the window-seat at once reproached him. “Not _your_ great-aunt, Justin, your _mother’s_ great-aunt, and it was her great-aunt Jane Eleanor, not her great-aunt Emily.” Justin jumped. Laura—as usual she was lying flat, her chin in her fists, her heels in the air—turned a page. She was no longer concerned. She had done her duty, and the _Arabian Nights_ was more than absorbing. “Oh, it was, was it?” said Justin. And then, recovering, “Shut up, Laura. It’s not your Aunt Emily!” She lifted eyes clouded with her story. “Eleanor—not Emily,” she corrected patiently. “Great-aunt Emily married Great-uncle Michael, and it’s their little boy you were so like when you were little. All except the nose.” The friend chuckled. “Where did you get all this from?” demanded Justin, overborne by the evidence. “I don’t know—your mother told me,” said Laura vaguely. Then, without a change of tone—“Justin, would _you_ have married _Haiatalnefous_, as well as the _Princess of China_ if you’d been _Camaralzaman_?” “Certainly not,” said Justin virtuously, and the friend went off into a sudden fit of laughter. “Because I don’t think it was fair,” said Laura with intense conviction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IX At half-past ten years old, Laura went to school and then came home again, with the simple directness of the King of France. It was her own fault, as she candidly admitted to herself—her own, Justin’s a little, still more Mr. Kipling’s, but mainly and responsibly, her own. You observe that she did not blame Aunt Adela at all. She was always a just child. And yet, of course, it was Aunt Adela who had been anxious for at least a year that Laura should go to school, who had said so, plaintively, once to Papa, who did not commit himself, and incessantly to Brackenhurst; for boarding schools had a Refining Influence ... and Companionship, you know ... and she had a bosom friend, a Miss Massingberd, such an Intellectual woman, who had recently opened a school and needed pupils....