"Now, all this may seem small business, but this boy is being _educated_ into refinement, and courtesy, and kindliness, or the reverse." "Curiously enough," said Belle, "without having any conscious theory on the subject, I have always acted on this principle with my children." "Are children, then, mere monkeys, imitating all they see done?" asked Laura. "They are not," was Mrs. Grey's reply. "Some children are so original that they cannot imitate. They think and act for themselves. They are hard to deal with in most cases, each needing a mother all to itself. But they are the exception, not the rule. Most of us owe almost everything to unconscious influence." But all serious talk was for the time put an end to, by a curious little incident. One of the nurses entered the room, leading by the hand Laura's baby-girl, who had just learned to walk. Another baby, who had not yet attained this art, was creeping about, picking up and putting into its mouth everything it could find; and no sooner did the older child perceive this, than down it went on all-fours, and began to creep too, to the great amusement of all present. "How perfectly ridiculous!" said Laura, snatching up and kissing her child. "'She stooped to conquer,'" said Margaret. And then followed any amount of youthful talk, and nursery tales from the family urchins. Mrs. Grey's extraordinary memory, where everything they ever said and did was stored up, together with some that, amid no little protest and fun, was warmly challenged. CHAPTER V. "I have always wondered," Laura proclaimed at the dinner-table that night, "how I came to be such a charming creature. But in the light of this morning's instructions, I perceive that it is through constant imitation of mamma." Now as Laura was considered in every way unlike her mother, this sally called forth, as it was intended to do, numerous personalities. "The resemblance is, indeed, astonishing," said Belle. "For instance, you are punctuality itself." "Of course," said Laura. "What unblushing effrontery!" cried Belle. "And I suppose you never lose money; keep your accounts to a T; can keep a secret--" "Oh, as to that," said Laura, "I am of too generous a disposition to keep anything. You see it is all owing to the nobility of my character that I have the reputation of being such a leaky vessel that you all turn me out of the room, when anything is going on you don't want the whole town to hear. By the by, mamma, you haven't told me what your next book is to be about?" "It is to be the history of Mrs. Laura Hosmer, _née_ Grey," said her mother. "Therein will be set forth all her gifts and graces, her deeds and her misdeeds."