er: "H'm! I'm
afraid there can't be much of the Roman Father about you!" Then the
Pater would roll up his accounts, and say, "I'll show you!" and
then--then, he'd be worse than any of us!'

'Fathers can--if they like,' said Una, her eyes dancing.

'Didn't I say all good families are very much the same?'

'What did you do in summer?' said Una. 'Play about, like us?'

'Yes, and we visited our friends. There are no wolves in Vectis. We
had many friends, and as many ponies as we wished.'

'It must have been lovely,' said Una. 'I hope it lasted for ever.'

'Not quite, little maid. When I was about sixteen or seventeen, the
Father felt gouty, and we all went to the Waters.'

'What waters?'

'At Aquae Sulis. Every one goes there. You ought to get your Father
to take you some day.'

'But where? I don't know,' said Una.

The young man looked astonished for a moment. 'Aquae Sulis,' he
repeated. 'The best baths in Britain. Just as good, I'm told, as
Rome. All the old gluttons sit in hot water, and talk scandal and
politics. And the Generals come through the streets with their guards
behind them; and the magistrates come in their chairs with their stiff
guards behind them; and you meet fortune-tellers, and goldsmiths, and
merchants, and philosophers, and feather-sellers, and ultra-Roman
Britons, and ultra-British Romans, and tame tribesmen pretending to be
civilised, and Jew lecturers, and--oh, everybody interesting. We young
people, of course, took no interest in politics. We had not the gout.
There were many of our age like us. We did not find life sad.

'But while we were enjoying ourselves without thinking, my sister met
the son of a magistrate in the West--and a year afterwards she was
married to him. My young brother, who was always interested in plants
and roots, met the First Doctor of a Legion from the City of the
Legions, and he decided that he would be an Army doctor. I do not
think it is a profession for a well-born man, but then--I'm not my
brother. He went to Rome to study medicine, and now he's First Doctor
of a Legion in Egypt--at Antinoe, I think, but I have not heard from
him for some time.

'My eldest brother came across a Greek philosopher, and told my Father
that he intended to settle down on the estate as a farmer and a
philosopher. You see,'--the young man's eyes twinkled--'his
philosopher was a long-haired one!'

'I thought philosophers were bald,' said Una.

'Not all.