Part 3 (1/2)
”She told ood spirits herself and that her old nurse often said:
”'No one should ever be surprised at anything they feel'
”My eneration in which it was not the fashi+on to read She had lived in a smalldistinguished people She had great powers of observation and a certain delicate acuteness of expression which identified all she said with herself She was fine-mouche and full of tender humour, a woman of the world, but entirely bereft of worldliness
”Her twelve children, who took up all her time, accounted for some of her a quoi bon attitude towards life, but she had little or no concentration and a feminine mind both in its purity and inconsequence
”My mother hardly had one intimate friend and never allowed any one to feel necessary to her Most people thought her gentle to docility and full of quiet coeneral impression that, out of nearly a hundred letters which I received, there is not one that does not allude to her restful nature As a matter of fact, Mamma was one of the most restless creatures that ever lived She moved from room to room, table to table, and topic to topic, not, it is true, with haste or fretfulness, but with no concentration of either thought or purpose; and I never saw her put up her feet in rip upon life prevented her fro the influence which her experience of the world and real insight iven her; and her want of expansion prevented her own generation and discouraged ours fro her closely
”Feomen have speculative minds nor can they deliberate: they have instincts, quick apprehensions and powers of observation; but they are seldoic nor their reason are their strong points Mamma was in all these ways like the rest of her sex
”She had much affection for, but hardly any pride in her children
Laura's genius was a phrase to her; and any praise of Charty's looks or Lucy's successes she took as mere courtesy on the part of the speaker I can never ree, nor did she ever encourage me to drarite or play the piano
”She marked in a French translation of ”The Iave her:
”'Certes au jour du jugement on ne nous demandera point ce que nous avons lu, mais ce que nous avons fait; ni si nous avons bien parle mais si nous avons bien vecu'
”She was the least self-centred and self-scanned of hu As Doll Liddell says in his adracious'”
CHAPTER II
GLEN AMONG THE MOORS--MARGOT'S ADVENTURE WITH A TRAMP--THE SHEPHERD BOY--MEMORIES AND ESCAPADES--LAURA AND MARGOT; PROPOSALS OF MARRIAGE--NEW MEN FRIENDS--LAURA ENGAGED; PROPOSAL IN THE DUSK--MARGOT'S ACCIDENT IN HUNTING FIELD--LAURA'S PREMONITION OF DEATH IN CHILD-BIRTH--LAURA'S WILL
My home, Glen, is on the border of Peeblesshi+re and Selkirkshi+re, sixteen ned on the lines of Glamis and Castle Fraser, in what is called Scottish baronial style I well remember the first shock I had when some one said: ”I hate turrets and tin men on the top of theined that anything could be ehame--and other fine places of the sort--appeared to s; the beams and flint in Cheshi+re reminded me of Earl's Court; and such castles as I had seen looked like the pictures of the Rhine on norant and ”Scottish baronial” thrilled me
What made Glen really unique was not its architecture but its situation The road by which you approached it was a cul-de-sac and led to nothing butten ave it security in its wildness
Great stretches of heather swept down to the garden walls; and, however hts you climbed, moor upon moor rose in front of you
Evan Charteris [Footnote: The Hon Evan Charteris] said that raphy: as it is my only claim to beauty, I would like to think that this is true, but the hills at Glen are raphy
Nature inoculates its lovers from its own culture; sea, downs and moors produce a different type of person Shepherds, fishermen and poachers are a little like what they contemplate and, were it possible to ask the towns to tell us whom they find most untamable, I have not a doubt that they would say, those who are born on the e of thirty--and spent all my early life at Glen I was a child of the heather and quite untamable After my sister Laura Lyttelton died, my brother Eddy and I lived alone with my parents for nine years at Glen
When he was abroad shooting big ga in for lunch Both my pony and my hack were saddled from 7 am, ready for me to ride, every day of my life I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same stuff, top-boots, a covert-coat and a coloured scarf round arettes and food
Every shepherd and poacher knewin the heather near the red burns, or sheltered from rain in the cuts and quarries of the open road