Dawson thought her mistress must have begun to write her “memoyers,” she wrote so long. She said as much to Judy and Noel when they came to pay Madame Claire a visit the next day. They were much interested in the news. Judy remembered “Old Stephen,” as she had called him years ago, and identified him by describing a mole that he had on one cheek. It was her first experience with moles, and for a long time after she confused that little mound on his face, with the bigger mounds the moles made in the lawn, and thought that a much smaller animal of the same species must have been to blame for it.
As a child she had an extraordinary memory—a memory that seemed to go beyond the things of this life. She came trailing clouds of glory in a way that used to alarm her mother and delight her grandmother. Millicent was quite shocked at a question of hers when she was four.
“Mummy, whose little girl was I before I was yours?”
Of course Millicent answered:
“Little silly, you’ve always been my little girl.”
But Judy wouldn’t hear of it, and shook her head till the curls flew.
When her grandmother questioned her about it, she would only repeat:
“It was another mummy under the big tree.”
Millicent was convinced that she only said it to annoy.
Noel too had little peculiarities as a child. Loud music always hurt his eyes, he said, and when he heard a noisy brass band he would shut them tightly and cry out: