"When you were sent for to come downstairs, Margot, the nurse opened the door and you walked in—generally alone—saying, 'Here's me! …'"
This rather sanguine opening does not seem to have been sufficiently checked. She went on to say:
"I was dreadfully afraid you would be upset and ill when I took you one day to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Glasgow, as you felt things with passionate intensity. Before starting I lifted you on to my knee and said, 'You know, darling, I am going to take you to see some poor people who cannot speak.' At which you put your arms round my neck and said, with consoling emphasis, 'I will soon make them speak!'"
The earliest event I can remember was the arrival of the new baby, my brother Jack, when I was two years old. Dr. Cox was spoiling my mother's good-night visit while I was being dried after my bath. My pink flannel dressing-gown, with white buttonhole stitching, was hanging over the fender; and he was discussing some earnest subject in a low tone. He got up and, pinching my chin said:
"She will be very angry, but we will give her a baby of her own," or words to that effect.
The next day a huge doll obliterated from my mind the new baby which had arrived that morning.
We were left very much alone in our nursery, as my mother travelled from pillar to post, hunting for health for her child Pauline. Our nurse, Mrs. Hills—called "Missuls" for short—left us on my tenth birthday to become my sister's lady's-maid, and this removed our first and last restriction.
We were wild children and, left to ourselves, had the time of our lives. I rode my pony up the front stairs and tried to teach my father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump—crashing their knees into the hurdles in the field—and climbed our incredibly dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and knew every turret at Glen. I ran along the narrow ledges of the slates in rubber shoes at terrific heights. This alarmed other people so much that my father sent for me one day to see him in his "business room" and made me swear before God that I would give up walking on the roof; and give it up I did, with many tears.
Laura and I were fond of acting and dressing up. We played at being found in dangerous and adventurous circumstances in the garden. One day the boys were rabbit-shooting and we were acting with the doctor's daughter. I had spoilt the game by running round the kitchen-garden wall instead of being discovered—as I was meant to be—in a Turkish turban, smoking on the banks of the Bosphorus. Seeing that things were going badly and that the others had disappeared, I took a wild jump into the radishes. On landing I observed a strange gentleman coming up the path. He looked at my torn gingham frock, naked legs, tennis shoes and dishevelled curls under an orange turban; and I stood still and gazed at him.
"This is a wonderful place," he said; to which I replied: