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Gran’papa’s bookshelf was crammed with volumes so tall and heavy that to pull one out was breathless work, and to lift it a greater feat than lifting the coal-scuttle or Wilfred who weighed three stone. They had to be read by a literary Laura reposing on her stomach, her legs waving airily, her elbows so chafed and reddened by the harsh carpet and her own weight, that they are to this day her worst point. Which is the reason, Collaborator, if the matter has bothered you, that Laura, even at that dinner-party we shall attend sooner or later, never wore really short sleeves.

But the books were worth it, even to the later Laura at her most feminine hour when Justin, unprompted, had admired her frock and said, not joking, that he liked red hair. (Truly—he said so!) For the books were an education, and an education is more useful than pretty elbows when one has a Justin for whom to stand tiptoe.

But to the early Laura, with her mother half lost and Justin not yet found, they were not education but Nepenthe—Nepenthe and the Fields.