em--whether she had a cheap theory that
they were in Latin and algebra.

The governess's evening hours in the quiet schoolroom would have suited
Laura well--so at least she believed; by touches of her own she would
make the place even prettier than it was already, and in the winter
nights, near the bright fire, she would get through a delightful course
of reading. There was the question of a new piano (the old one was
pretty bad--Miss Steet had a finger!) and perhaps she should have to ask
Selina for that--but it would be all. The schoolroom at Mellows was not
a charmless place and the girl often wished that she might have spent
her own early years in so dear a scene. It was a sort of panelled
parlour, in a wing, and looked out on the great cushiony lawns and a
part of the terrace where the peacocks used most to spread their tails.
There were quaint old maps on the wall, and 'collections'--birds and
shells--under glass cases, and there was a wonderful pictured screen
which old Mrs. Berrington had made when Lionel was young out of
primitive woodcuts illustrative of nursery-tales. The place was a
setting for rosy childhood, and Laura believed her sister never knew
how delightful Scratch and Parson looked there. Old Mrs. Berrington had
known in the case of Lionel--it had all been arranged for him. That was
the story told by ever so many other things in the house, which betrayed
the full perception of a comfortable, liberal, deeply domestic effect,
addressed to eternities of possession, characteristic thirty years
before of the unquestioned and unquestioning old lady whose sofas and
'corners' (she had perhaps been the first person in England to have
corners) demonstrated the most of her cleverness.

Laura Wing envied English children, the boys at least, and even her own
chubby nephews, in spite of the cloud that hung over them; but she had
already noted the incongruity that appeared to-day between Lionel
Berrington at thirty-five and the influences that had surrounded his
younger years. She did not dislike her brother-in-law, though she
admired him scantily, and she pitied him; but she marvelled at the waste
involved in some human institutions (the English country gentry for
instance) when she perceived that it had taken so much to produce so
little. The sweet old wainscoted parlour, the view of the garden that
reminded her of scenes in Shakespeare's comedies, all that was exquisite
in the home of his forefathers--what vis