Contrast with this cramped life, even with an intense affection to grace it, more ardent than that tolerant good comradeship of many English parents with their little children, with the life of a child, even in a quite modest household, who from its earliest moments has had a part of the home sacred to it. That room, small or large, was always loved: it was a peaceful haven to return to after the adventures and exhibitions of a less sympathetic external world. There Nana held beneficent sway, but the real inhabitants were the children themselves and the favourite creatures of their play-world. There was room for disorder in the disorderly mood, even though it all had to be cleared up; there noise was not immediately hushed; there one could loll or sprawl without being reproved; there nothing was precious of that preciousness which meant that throwing cushions was a crime and breakage a disaster; there the air was fresh and not laden with the fumes of cigars or heavy perfumes; there meals could be eaten in one’s own time, for, fearful as were the treats of feeding with the grown-ups, it was discouraging to find that one’s efforts at spritely conversation were apt to fall flat, and that one must get finished about the same time as large people with large mouths who were allowed to talk with their mouths full, at the risk of being told that everybody was waiting and that one was not to talk any more. The nursery is the enemy of self-consciousness, it is the home of frankness and a light hearted innocence. No good Englishwoman is ever out of place in a nursery, whether it be hers or another’s: she knows instinctively that there are few places on earth where her virtues are more obvious, and she herself has been a little English girl in that happy nursery land which is the cradle of all good Englishwomen.