She sank into a low easy chair with an air of fatigue, and Margaret seeing her look round for a footstool, brought her one and placed it under her feet. "Thank you, my dear," she said, "and now if you will get me my knitting from that table in the corner we will have a nice, cosy chat. Thank goodness my work for the day is all done!" Ten minutes spent in the kitchen assenting to all that a very excellent cook-housekeeper suggested constituted Mrs. Danvers "work for the day." "There are many things I wanted to ask you about my old friend and cousin, Miss McDonald. By the way, what do you think of the children?" When Margaret answered that she had not yet seen them, Mrs. Danvers, after a short pause of astonishment, gave a vexed laugh. At least, to start with, the laugh was tinged with vexation; but as she continued to laugh the feeling of annoyance was merged into one of hearty amusement. "That's Hannah all over," she said. "Hannah is jealous of you. She is their nurse, you know, and has been with them since they have been born. She's the only person who can manage them. I can't, and their mother can't, though Joanna would be very angry if she heard I had said that. But I told Hannah to bring the children down to see you here after breakfast. However, as she did not choose to do so, it is no good annoying her by saying anything about it. I will take you up to the nurseries presently, when we have had that nice little chat about my dear cousin. But Joanna," she said, reverting to her daughter and her children, "is always going in for new systems with them. At one time her theory was that they must not be spoiled by having any notice taken of them. During that period they lived entirely in the nursery. I remember I was staying there at the time, and I thought I had never enjoyed a visit to my daughter so much. Next time I went the children were being brought up in the fashion of their great-grandmothers. They were taught to say 'Ma'am' to their mother, and 'Sir' to their father, and were not allowed to sit down in their presence, and never, never to speak unless they were spoken to. I enjoyed that visit too. But the latest and the reigning idea is that they are not to be thwarted or crossed in any way, and as for being punished such barbarity is not to be thought of. If detected in naughtiness they are to be reasoned with only, and if the naughtiness is persisted in it is to be taken for granted that the small sinners are ill, and must be gently nursed into good health and goodness again." As she listened to this Margaret came to the conclusion that their mother must be an extraordinarily silly woman, but when Mrs. Danvers went on to add that Joanna, after expounding her new theory in detail, had gone away to Norway to fish with her husband, and left her mother to find out how it worked, Margaret smiled outright.