plans, to which we listened aghast, and Margaret was actually getting up to go and look after her amphibious offspring herself, when her daughter cut her off short with, “Nonsense, mamma, you know you are not to do any such thing!  I must go, that’s all, or they won’t have a decent boot or stocking left among them.”  Off she went with another bang, while her mother began blaming herself for having yielded in haste to the persuasions of the little ones, oblivious of the boots, thus sacrificing Jane’s happy morning with Avice.  My mother showed herself shocked by the tone in which Margaret had let herself be hectored, and this brought a torrent of almost tearful apologies from the poor dear thing, knowing she did not keep up her authority or make herself respected as would be good for her girl, but if we only knew how devoted Jane was, and how much there was to grind and try her temper, we should not wonder that it gave way sometimes.  Indeed it was needful to turn away the subject, as Margaret was the last person we wished to distress.

Jane could have shown no temper to the children, for at dinner a roly-poly person of five years old, who seems to absorb all the fat in the family, made known that he had had a very jolly day, and he loved cousin Avice very much indeed, and sister Janie very much indeeder, and he could with difficulty be restrained from an expedition to kiss them both then and there.

The lost box was announced while we were at dinner, and Jane is gone with her faithful Avice to unpack it.  Her mother would have done it and sent her boating with the rest, but submitted as usual when commanded to adhere to the former plan of driving with grandmamma.  These Druce children must be excellent, according to their mother, but they are terribly brusque and bearish.  They are either seen and not heard, or not seen and heard a great deal too much.  Even Jane and Meg, who ought to know better, keep up a perpetual undercurrent of chatter and giggle, whatever is going on, with any one who will share it with them.

10.—­I am more and more puzzled about the new reading of the Fifth Commandment.  None seem to understand it as we used to do.  The parents are content to be used as equals, and to be called by all sorts of absurd names; and though grandmamma is always kindly and attentively treated, there is no reverence for the relationship.  I heard Charley call her ‘a jolly old party,’ and Metelill respond that she was ‘a sweet old thing.’  Why, we should have thought such expressions about our grandmother a sort of sacrilege, but when I ventured to hint as much Charley flippantly answered, “Gracious me, we are not going back to buckram”; and Metelill, with her caressing way, declared that she loved dear granny too much to be so stiff and formal.  I quoted—­

“If I be a Father, where is My honour?”