‘I was no beauty at eighteen,’ my mother admits, but here my father interferes unexpectedly. ‘There wasna your like in this countryside at eighteen,’ says he stoutly.
‘Pooh!’ says she, well pleased.
‘Were you plain, then?’ we ask.
‘Sal,’ she replies briskly, ‘I was far from plain.’
‘H’sh!’
Perhaps in the next chapter this lady (or another) appears in a carriage.
‘I assure you we’re mounting in the world,’ I hear my mother murmur, but I hurry on without looking up. The lady lives in a house where there are footmen—but the 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, ‘Footman, give me a drink of water,’ she cries, and this sets her off again. Often the readings had to end abruptly because her mirth brought on violent fits of coughing.
Sometimes I read to my sister alone, and she assured me that she could not see my mother among the women this time. This she said to humour me. Presently she would slip upstairs to announce triumphantly, ‘You are in again!’
Or in the small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, ‘That lassie is very natural. Some of the ways you say she had—your mother had them just the same. Did you ever notice what an extraordinary woman your mother is?’
Then would I seek my mother for comfort. She was the more ready to give it because of her profound conviction that if I was found out—that is, if readers discovered how frequently and in how many guises she appeared in my books—the affair would become a public scandal.