She forgot these ecstasies of mutinous solitude when she was downstairs, playing an eager set of tennis with Hal or Nina, getting into scrapes with Bunny, or simply joining in the habit of general ragging or bickering which occurred regularly four times a day round a table, and which was the only up-to-date presentment of what was still symbolically known as “family life.” “Family life” occurred at meal-times, but otherwise, and as a social force, it was not in a robust condition. Each member of the large household led a curiously detached life; they saw so much of each other that they never bothered to talk; they knew so much of each other’s corporeal presence, that the spirit was taken for granted. Besides this, there was the tradition of rudeness and snubs between brothers and sisters, which it would have been bad form to violate. Familiarity breeds, not contempt, but strangeness. Thus Bunny never thought of beginning a long pally intimate talk with Ursula or Hal--he saw them both all day and every day; Nina, though she was a fanatic on the subject of Hal’s perfections, knew nothing whatever about his mental life; and carried all her own revelations of a private Nina well away from the Laburnums--to Mrs. Mather, say; or to Mary Cliffe, who understood her so well. Hal had his school-friends; Mrs. Maxwell her Buckler’s Cross ladies; Mr. Maxwell his city cronies; Ursula her room; William his neat collections of whatever was collectable, and an odd liking for snatched half-hours with Nurse, when he talked rather slowly and ponderously of his ambitions and general outlook and the injustices meted out to Bunny, and she said at intervals: “Nonsense, Master William--I don’t believe half you say, and you’re in my light”; Miss Roberts her diary--yes, bless her, she wrote a diary, and kept her soul, such meagre allowance of it as she was able to save from the day’s propinquities, tightly pressed between the leaves; Lottie walked arm-in-arm with other ten-year-olds, and invited them to tea and giggled confidentially with them in corners of the garden.... But it was a queer arrangement, although so commonplace that no one stopped to think it queer--all these people tightly jammed together, and knowing no more of each other than was visible to the eye. Aunt Lavvy, perhaps, was deposit for the biggest proportion of real Nina, real Bunny and Hal and Grace and Ursula. But Aunt Lavvy had quaint ways which always brought out the best in all of them--a best that they were wont to leave behind with her when they carried their grubbier loads of humannesses elsewhere; they knew they could as securely count on finding it again whenever they might want it, as though Aunt Lavvy were the cloakroom in a large station.