Her brother Samuel she had always disliked because he laughed at her; her sister she did not care for because she was very innocently, poor lady, flaunting her superior married state; and her brother-in-law she did not like because he always behaved as though she were one of a vast public of elderly ladies who were useful for helping in clerical displays, but were otherwise non-existent.

Then she hated children, so that she really often wondered why she continued to live with her brother-in-law, but it was cheap, comfortable and safe, and although she assured herself and everyone else that there were countless homes wildly eager to receive her, it was perhaps just as well not to put their eagerness too abruptly to the test.
There had been war between her and Jeremy since Jeremy's birth, but it had been war of a rather mild and inoffensive character, consisting largely in Jeremy on his side putting out his tongue at her when she could not see him, and she on her side sending him to wash his ears when they really did not require to be washed.

She had felt always in Jeremy an obstinate dislike of her, and as he had seemed to her neither a very clever nor intelligent child she had consoled herself very easily with the thought that he did not like her simply because he was stupid.

So it had been until this year, and then suddenly they had been flung into sharper opposition.

It was hard to say what had brought this about, but it was perhaps that Jeremy had sprung suddenly from the unconscious indifference of a young child into the active participation of a growing boy.