Her ideas of life were confined to the three or four families with whom she had passed her days, and Janet had never discovered anything of interest in any of her predecessors; Alice Crate (her father was Canon Crate of Winchester Cathedral), Mary Devonshire (her father was a merchant in Liverpool), and Eleanor Simpson (her father was a stockbroker and lived in London). Besides, all these things had happened a long while ago; Miss Minns had been with Janet for the last twelve years, and fact had become reminiscence and reminiscence tradition within that time. Miss Minns of the moment with which we have to do was not a very lively person for a very young creature to be attached to; she was always on the quiver, from the peak of her little black bonnet to the tip of her tiny black shoes. When she did talk, her conversation suffered from much repetition and was thickly strewn with familiar proverbs, such as “All’s well that ends well” and “Make hay while the sun shines.” She served no purpose at all as far as Janet was concerned, save as an occasional audience of a very negative kind. The only other person with whom Janet had been brought into contact, her father, was far more perplexing. She had accepted him in her early years as somebody about whom there was no question. When he was amusing and played with her there was no one in the world so completely delightful. He had carried her sometimes into the woods and they had spent the whole day there. She remembered when he had whistled and sung and the animals had come creeping from all over the wood. The birds had climbed on to his shoulders and hands, rabbits and hares had let him take them in his hands and had shown no fear at all. She remembered once that a snake had crawled about his arm. He had played with her as though he had been a child like herself, and she had done what she pleased with him and he had told her wonderful stories. And then suddenly, for no reason that she could understand, that mood had left him and he had been suddenly angry, terribly, furiously angry. She had seen him once take a kitten that they had had in his hands and, whilst it purred in his face, he had twisted its neck and killed it. That had happened when she was very small, but she would never forget it. Then she had grown gradually accustomed to this rage and had fled away and hidden. But on two occasions he had beaten her, and then, afterwards, in a moment it had passed, and he had cried and kissed her and given her presents.