‘Oh, that’s beginning at the wrong end. Aunt Ada is the youngest of them all, and she thinks she is a young lady still, and wears little curls on her forehead, and a tennis pinafore, and makes her waist just like a wasp. She and Aunt Jane live together at Rockquay, because she has bad health--at least she has whenever she likes; and Aunt Jane does all sorts of charities and worries, and sets everybody to rights,’ said Dolly, in a very grown-up voice, speaking partly from her own observation, and partly repeating what she had caught from her elders. ‘Oh yes, I know her,’ said Maude. ‘She asked me questions about all I did, and she did bother mamma so about a maid she recommended that we are never going to take another from her.’ ‘Aunt Phyllis comes between them, I believe; but she has married a sailor captain and gone to settle in New Zealand, and I have not seen her since I was a very little girl. Then there’s Aunt Emily, who is a very great swell indeed. Her husband was a canon, Lord Henry Grey; but he is dead, and she lives at Brighton, a regular fat, comfortable down-pillow of a woman, who isn’t bad to lunch with, only she sends one out to the Parade with her maid, as if one was a baby. Mother used to laugh at her. And I think there was an older one who went to India and died long ago.’ ‘I have seen your two uncles. There’s Major Mohun. Oh! he is fun!’ ‘Yes, dear old Uncle Regie! I wish he was not in Ireland. He will be so sorry to miss seeing father off, but he can’t get leave. And there was a clergyman who is dead, and father grieved for very much. I think he did something to make them all nicer to mother, for it was just after that we went to stay at Beechcroft with Uncle William. You know him, and how mother used to call him the very model of a country squire; and I like his wife, Aunt Alethea. Only it is very pokey and slow down there, and they are always after flannel petticoats and soup kitchens, and all the old fads that are exploded. I should get awfully tired of it before a year was out, only I should not be teased with strange children, and there would be no one to be jealous of me.’ ‘Can’t you get your father to change and send you there?’ ‘Not a chance. You see Aunt Lilias had offered, and they haven’t, and I must go on with my education. I hope, though I shall have no advantages, I shall still be able to go up for the Cambridge examination, if Aunt Lilias has not prejudices, as I dare say she has, since of course none of her own will be able to try.’ ‘You’ll come up to us for the examination, Dolly dear, and we shall do it together, and that will be nice!’ ‘If they will let me; but I don’t expect to be allowed to do anything that I wish. Only perhaps father may be come home by that time.’ ‘Is it three years?’ ‘Yes. It is a terrible time, isn’t it? However, when I’m seventeen perhaps he will talk to me, and I can really keep house.’ ‘And then you’ll come back here?’