‘You see Jess is not really you,’ I begin inquiringly.
‘Oh no, she is another kind of woman altogether,’ my mother says, and then spoils the compliment by adding naîvely, ‘She had but two rooms and I have six.’
I sigh. ‘Without counting the pantry, and it’s a great big pantry,’ she mutters.
This was not the sort of difference I could greatly plume myself upon, and honesty would force me to say, ‘As far as that goes, there was a time when you had but two rooms yourself—’
‘That’s long since,’ she breaks in. ‘I began with an up-the-stair, but I always had it in my mind—I never mentioned it, but there it was—to have the down-the-stair as well. Ay, and I’ve had it this many a year.’
‘Still, there is no denying that Jess had the same ambition.’
‘She had, but to her two-roomed house she had to stick all her born days. Was that like me?’
‘No, but she wanted—’
‘She wanted, and I wanted, but I got and she didna. That’s the difference betwixt her and me.’
‘If that is all the difference, it is little credit I can claim for having created her.’