This is still the Introduction.
When I was at last revived enough to think I knew what had happened. The young man who took the Cinder out of my eye had come to sit beside me, which I consider was merely kindness on his part and nothing like Flirting, and he had brought his Suitcase over, and they had got mixed up. But I knew the Familey would call it Flirting, and not listen to a word I said.
A madness siezed me. Now that everything is over, I realize that it was madness. But “there is a divinity that shapes our ends etc.” It was to be. It was Karma, or Kismet, or whatever the word is. It was written in the Book of Fate that I was to go ahead, and wreck my life, and generaly ruin everything.
I locked the door behind Hannah, and stood with tradgic feet, “where the brook and river meet.” What was I to do? How hide this evadence of my (presumed) duplicaty? I was inocent, but I looked gilty. This, as everyone knows, is worse than gilt.
I unpacked the Suitcase as fast as I could, therfore, and being just about destracted, I bundled the things up and put them all together in the toy Closet, where all Sis’s dolls and mine are, mine being mostly pretty badly gone, as I was always hard on dolls.
How far removed were those Inocent Years when I played with dolls!
Well, I knew Hannah pretty well, and therfore was not surprised when, having hidden the trowsers under a doll buggy, I heard mother’s voice at the door.
“Let me in, Barbara,” she said.
I closed the closet door, and said: “What is it, mother?”
“Let me in.”