Some of the children were now at school, but Lucy, a girl ten years of age, was a supercilious child who rebelled against the conditions of her life, but was too idle and superior to attempt any alteration of them.

After her there were Roger, Dorothy, and Robert.

Then came Bim, four years of age a fortnight ago, and, last of all, Timothy, an infant of nine months.
With the exception of Lucy and Bim they were exceedingly noisy children.
Lucy should have passed her days in the schoolroom under the care of Miss Agg, a melancholy and hope-abandoned spinster, and, during lesson hours, there indeed she was.

But in the schoolroom she had no one to impress with her amazing wisdom and dignity.

"Poor mummy," as she always thought of her mother, was quite unaware of her habits or movements, and Miss Agg was unable to restrain either the one or the other, so Lucy spent most of her time in the nursery, where she sat, calm and collected, in the midst of confusion that could have "given old Babel points and won easy." She was reverenced by all the younger children for her sedate security, but by none of them so surely and so magnificently as Bim.