I often think I'm rather like grandfather. P'raps if he'd had four sisters or a not-too-giving-in wife he'd have been better. Now, I hope that's not rude? I don't mean it to be; I'm rather excusing him. And I can't put down what isn't true, even though nobody should ever see this 'veracious history'—that's what I'm going to put on the title-page—except myself. And the truth is that grandfather expects everybody and everything to give in to him. Not always father, for he does see how grand and clever father is, and that he can't be expected to come and go, and do things, and give up things, just like a baby. But oh, as for poor little mums!—that's mother—her life's not her own when gran's with us. And it isn't that she's silly a bit. She's awfully sensible; something like Hebe and Maud mixed together, though to look at her she's more like Anne. It's real goodness makes her give in.

'He's getting old, dears, you know,' she says, 'and practically he's so very good to us.'

I'm not quite sure that I understand quite what 'practically' means. I think it's to do with the house—or the houses, for we've got two—and money. For father, though he's so clever, wouldn't be rich without grandfather, I don't think. Perhaps it means presents too. He—grandfather—isn't bad about presents. He never forgets birthdays or Christmases—oh dear, no, he's got an awfully good memory. Sometimes some of us would almost rather be worse off for presents if only he'd forget some other things.

I'm like him about remembering too. I think my mind is rather tidy, as well as my outside ways. I've got things very neat inside; I often feel as if it was a cupboard, and I like to know exactly which shelf to go to for anything I want. Mums says, 'That's all very well so far as it goes, Jack, but don't stop short at that, or you will be in danger of growing narrow-minded and self-satisfied.'

And I think I know what she means. There are some things now about Anne, for all her tiresome ways, that I know are grander than about me, or even perhaps than about Hebe, only Hebe's sweetness makes up for everything. But Anne would give anything in a moment to do any one a good turn. And I—well, I'd think about it. I didn't at all like having to tear up my nice pocket-handkerchief even the day we found the poor little boy with his leg bleeding so dreadfully in the Park, and Anne had hers in strips in a moment. And she'll lend her very best things to any one of us. And she's got feelings I don't understand. Beautiful church music makes her want so dreadfully to be good, she says. I like it very much, but I don't think I feel it that way. I just feel nice and quiet, and almost a little sleepy if it goes on a good while.

I was telling about our house in London. It's big, and rather grand in a dull sort of way, but dark and gloomy. Long ago, when they built big houses, I think they fancied it was the proper thing to make them dark. It's nice in winter when it's shut up for the night, and the gas lighted in the hall and on the staircases, and with the lamps in the dining-room and drawing-rooms and library—it is very warm and comfortable then, and though the furniture's old-fashioned, and not a pretty kind of old-fashioned, it looks grand in a way. But when the spring comes, and the bright days show up all the dinginess, poor mother, how she does sigh!

'I would so like to have a pretty house,' she says. 'The curtains are all so dark, you can scarcely see they're any colour at all, and those dreadful heavy gilt frames to the mirrors in the drawing-rooms! Oh, Alan'—Alan is father—'don't you think gran would let us refurnish even the third drawing-room? I could make it a sort of boudoir, you know, and I could have my own friends in there in the daytime. The rooms don't look so bad at night.'

But father shakes his head.

'I'm afraid he wouldn't like it,' he says.

So I suppose even father gives in a good deal to gran.