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The knitting needles would slacken for long minutes, till at last, with a click and a gleam, caught from the fire or from Mrs. Cloud’s eyes, hands and voice would pick up the thread.

“I’m afraid he was a bad boy, too. I remember——”

Then Laura would give a sigh of achievement and settle down to listen.

But besides the stories, the interminable stories that a child loves, of other little boys and girls, there was endless amusement in the grown-ups, the drooping ladies and Mr. Mantalini gentlemen, the family groups with pig-tailed children, the crinolines and the bustles, the whiskers and the ringlets, and the pork-pie hats of all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandfathers and great-grandmothers of Justin. It was very interesting: and she learned to refer to them with an air of intimate recollection that staggered Justin one day, when, sprawling by the fire with a college friend and The Scarlet Pimpernel, he told a story, quite a good story, of an émigré who had married a great-aunt or other of his own.