All the girls were going to school in the town as yet, but soon Molly and Nellie were to go to Miss Bussell’s for a year each to be “finished”. When, later, Laura asked her father if Johnny would go to Miss Bussell’s, too, he laughed and said, “Of course not. It’s a girls’ school. For the daughters of gentlemen, says the brass plate on the door, and that means for the daughters of a chimney sweep, if he can afford to pay.”

“Then where will Johnny go?” she persisted, and her father said, “Eton, I s’pose,” which rather alarmed Laura because she thought he had said “eaten”. She was relieved when he added, “But I doubt if that’ll be good enough. They’ll have to build a special school on purpose for Johnny.”

What surprised Laura most as she listened to her cousins that afternoon was that they spoke of school as if they liked it. The hamlet children hated school. It was prison to them, and from the very beginning they counted the years until they would be able to leave. But Molly and Nellie and Amy said school was great fun. Annie did not like it so much.

“A-h-h! Who’s bottom of her class!” laughed Nell. But Molly said, “Never mind her, Annie. She may be good at lessons, but she can’t sew for nuts, and you’re going to get the needlework prize with that baby’s frock you’re making. Ask her what Miss Pridham said when she examined her herring-boning.”

Then a voice from the upper garden called them in to tea. Just the kind of tea Laura liked, bread and butter and jam and a cake and some little cakes, a little more of everything than they had at home, but not the rich, bewildering abundance of the “refreshments”.

She liked her cousins’ house, too. It was old, with little flights of steps going up or down in unexpected places. Aunt Ann’s parlour had a piano across one corner and a soft green carpet the colour of faded moss. The windows were wide open and there was a delicious scent of wallflowers and tea and cake and cobbler’s wax. They had tea out of the silver teapot at the large round table in the parlour that day. Afterwards, they always had tea in the kitchen, much the nicest room in the house, with its two windows with window seats and brass warming pans and candlesticks and strips of red-and-blue striped matting on the stone floor.