other people had them too,' said Una.
'Tell me about all your family, please.'

'Good families are very much alike. Mother would sit spinning of evenings
while Aglaia read in her corner, and Father did accounts, and we four
romped about the passages. When our noise grew too loud the Pater would
say, "Less tumult! Less tumult! Have you never heard of a Father's right
over his children? He can slay them, my loves--slay them dead, and the Gods
highly approve of the action!" Then Mother would prim up her dear mouth
over the wheel and answer: "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 Solis. 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 Solis,' he repeated.
'The best baths in Britain. Just as good, I'm told, as Rome. All the old
gluttons sit in its 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 n