CHAPTER II

OUT of the darkness of my infancy there comes only one flash of
memory. I am seated alone, in my baby-chair, at a dinner-table
set for several people. Somebody brings in a leg of mutton, puts
it down close to me, and goes out. I am again alone, gazing at
two low windows, wide open upon a garden. Suddenly, noiselessly,
a large, long animal (obviously a greyhound) appears at one
window-sill, slips into the room, seizes the leg of mutton and
slips out again. When this happened I could not yet talk. The
accomplishment of speech came to me very late, doubtless because
I never heard young voices. Many years later, when I mentioned
this recollection, there was a shout of laughter and surprise:
'That, then, was what became of the mutton! It was not you, who,
as your Uncle A. pretended, ate it up, in the twinkling of an
eye, bone and all!'

I suppose that it was the startling intensity of this incident
which stamped it upon a memory from which all other impressions
of this early date have vanished.

The adventure of the leg of mutton occurred, evidently, at the
house of my Mother's brothers, for my parents, at this date,
visited no other. My uncles were not religious men, but they had
an almost filial respect for my Mother, who was several years
senior to the elder of them. When the catastrophe of my
grandfather's fortune had occurred, they had not yet left school.
My Mother, in spite of an extreme dislike of teaching, which was