another story my mother might ask

it is about,' my sist

e,' says my mother, with the meekness of

times. 'What woman is in all

mother determinedly. 'I thought t

be so audacious! Fine yo

ar in mind that I hinna your cleverness' (they w

g her name. But this I will say, it is high

usly. 'That is what I tell him,' she says chuckling, 'and he

that must be got over at a walking pace (my mother did not care for scenery, and that is why there is so little of it in my books). But now I am reading too quickly, a little apprehensively, because I know that the next paragraph begins with-let us say with, 'Along this path came a woman': I had intended to rush on here in a loud bullying voice, but 'Along this path came a woman' I read, a

to behave!' cr

lp it,' my m

s nothing t

' my mother expla

e woman you think h

mother doubtfully.

Margaret'; but this makes her ripple again.

ather, and the re

stic figure, which should have shown my mother that I had cont

my sister severely. 'Do you not hear

ever heard it said of h

she

y, ha

ook sa

ueer things in the book

hen I come upon a woman in a book, the first thing I want to know about

s eighteen years of age,

es you,' sa

re my father interferes unexpectedly. 'There wasna your

ys she, we

plain, the

s briskly, 'I was

's

ter this lady (or anothe

footmen have come on the scene too hurriedly. 'This is more than I can stand,' gasps my mother, and just as she is getting the better of a fit of laughter, 'Footm

see my mother among the women this time. This she said to humour me. Pres

e would say thoughtfully, 'That lassie is very natural. Some of the ways you say she had-your

profound conviction that if I was found out-that is, if readers discovered how frequentl

ot really you,' I

y mother says, and then spoils the compliment by ad

the pantry, and it's a gre

self upon, and honesty would force me to say, 'As far as tha

I always had it in my mind-I never mentioned it, but there it was-to

denying that Jess ha

d house she had to stick all h

t she w

I got and she didna. That's the

e, it is little credit I can

say eagerly. 'There's my silk, for instance. Though I say it mysel, there's not a better sil

ut you remember how she g

was that to boast of! I tell you,

e very way Jess spo

ng it, for solicitude about her silk has

m afraid that wa

she had boasted to me about her cloak with beads, I would have said to her in a careless sort of voice, "Step acro

at is what you woul

come into her face. 'No,' she wo

u have done? I

as a poor woman, and ailing, and terrible windy about her cloak, and I w

t oh, mother, that is just how Jess would have acted if

boasted about my silk I w

been fidgeting to show

ly be something of my mother in it, and not to the second, as it was my first novel and not much esteemed even in

my young days,' she says, 'I played about the Auld Licht mans

garet is

ferent life from mine. I never l

en I began. Mother, what a way

ep better watc

called Margaret by

mother I began to laugh. In some ways, though, she's no' so very like me. She

, kept close to

t the manse that would

out in t

have found me looking

in was s

have put me

suspected

der at

to be a child. What ha

ing to say even to that. 'Th

what you are thinking, but

her real thoughts are revealed by the artless remark, 'I doubt, though,

u write is about this bit place. You little expected that when you began. I mind well the time when it never entered y

was never much pleasure to me in writing of people who could not have known you, nor of squares and wynds you never passed through, nor of a country-side where you never carried

you could make your women-folk out of! Do you mind that, and how we

emem

's more than sixty years since I carried his dinn

e stile at the edge of the wood till I fancy I see a l

agon round so quick that what was inside hadna time to fall out. I used

my story wears a magenta f

assie in a pinafore you saw in the long parks o

, when she was far away, but when she

fell ug

tiful one I sh

u say it. Look at my

etest face in

s drop off my poo

someone nigh, mother,

ou were but a bairn you used to say, "Wait till I'm a m

memb

e on feathers." You saw nothing bonny, you never heard of my setting my heart on anything, but what you flung up your head and cried, "Wait till I'm a man." You fair shamed me before the neighbours, and yet I was windy, too. And now it has all come true like a dream. I can call to mi

would say, but she did not like that. 'They w

rs and less for herself than any other human being I have known, saw this, and by some means unfathomable to a man coaxed my mother into being once again the woman she had been. On a day but three weeks before she died my father and I were called softly upstairs. My mother was sitting bolt upright, as she loved to sit, in her old chair by the window, with a manuscript in her hands. But she was looking about her without much understanding. 'Just to please him,' my sister whispered, and then in a low, trembling voice my mother began to read. I looked at my sister. Tears of woe were