Part 9 (1/2)

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.

'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 naively, '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.'

My mother sees that I need soothing. 'That is far from being all the difference,' she would say eagerly. 'There's my silk, for instance.

Though I say it mysel, there's not a better silk in the valley of Strathmore. Had Jess a silk of any kind-not to speak of a silk like that?'

'Well, she had no silk, but you remember how she got that cloak with beads.'

'An eleven and a bit! Hoots, what was that to boast of! I tell you, every single yard of my silk cost-'

'Mother, that is the very way Jess spoke about her cloak!'

She lets this pa.s.s, perhaps without hearing it, for solicitude about her silk has hurried her to the wardrobe where it hangs.

'Ah, mother, I am afraid that was very like Jess!'

'How could it be like her when she didna even have a wardrobe? I tell you what, if there had been a real Jess and she had boasted to me about her cloak with beads, I would have said to her in a careless sort of voice, ”Step across with me, Jess and I'll let you see something that is hanging in my wardrobe.” That would have lowered her pride!'

'I don't believe that is what you would have done, mother.'

Then a sweeter expression would come into her face. 'No,' she would say reflectively, 'it's not.'

'What would you have done? I think I know.'

'You canna know. But I'm thinking I would have called to mind that she was a poor woman, and ailing, and terrible windy about her cloak, and I would just have said it was a beauty and that I wished I had one like it.'

'Yes, I am certain that is what you would have done. But oh, mother, that is just how Jess would have acted if some poorer woman than she had shown her a new shawl.'

'Maybe, but though I hadna boasted about my silk I would have wanted to do it.'

'Just as Jess would have been fidgeting to show off her eleven and a bit!'