She needed a whipping, of course. Brackenhurst, deeply interested, urged it upon Aunt Adela. But somehow it was difficult to inflict upon the soft-eyed, mouse-like creature that was Laura—until you roused her. And Laura never let Aunt Adela rouse her now-a-days, was a good little girl and an obedient, with her Aunt Adela. As Adela admitted to Brackenhurst, she was, in daily life, docile enough. Aunt Adela, who could not understand her contradictions, never realized that you might prune as you pleased—if you left her roots alone. But Laura had it out with a grimly smiling grandfather, who did not appear surprised. He heard what she had to say, discussed the matter with her as he never did with Adela, and, to every one’s horror, let her have her way. Possibly Laura’s challenge to her aunt—“Why can’t Gran’papa teach me? He knows tons more than Miss Massingberd”—tickled him. At any rate Laura stayed at home, and her education, as it achieved itself between the two of them, with occasional help from Justin, was, if irregular, at least essentially satisfying. She was, of course, if you contrast her provision with the full fare of the schools, fed and clad but scantily; but her scraps fell at least from ambrosial tables and her rags were cloth-of-golden. And she throve. That is certain. Aunt Adela’s next move, naturally, was to demand a governess. But even her assiduity had not been able to discover any one whom Gran’papa could endure for more than a month. A week was usually enough for them both. With visitors, half-hour visitors, he found it hard enough to be uncritical; but to have a stranger, and a feminine stranger at that, with an inevitable mannerism to jar his fidgety niceness, definitely established in his household, drove him into a fever of nervous irritation. His patient daughter did her best, but it required more nerve than she possessed to say, however sweetly, to an efficient young woman with certificates and a silk petticoat: “Oh, by the way, Miss—er—, you _don’t_ blow your nose at meals, do you?” and after the rout of Miss Runciman with her nervous little giggle, of Miss Sandys who would talk to Papa while he was eating, and of Miss Jenkins who used slang and dropped her g’s, Aunt Adela decided that an English girl without an affectation was beyond discovery, and that Papa must look after Laura’s education by himself. Can you hear her _sotto-voce_ indignation? Can you see her washing her long, twitching hands of the whole affair? There is no doubt but that Papa was exceedingly trying. All Brackenhurst knew it and pitied the poor lady. But neither Brackenhurst nor she herself ever had the moral courage to tell him so.