to say, "O matra pulchra filia pulchrior"?' which astounded them
very much if she managed to reach the end without being flung, but
usually she had a fit of laughing in the middle, and so they found
her out.

Biography and exploration were her favourite reading, for choice
the biography of men who had been good to their mothers, and she
liked the explorers to be alive so that she could shudder at the
thought of their venturing forth again; but though she expressed a
hope that they would have the sense to stay at home henceforth, she
gleamed with admiration when they disappointed her. In later days
I had a friend who was an African explorer, and she was in two
minds about him; he was one of the most engrossing of mortals to
her, she admired him prodigiously, pictured him at the head of his
caravan, now attacked by savages, now by wild beasts, and adored
him for the uneasy hours he gave her, but she was also afraid that
he wanted to take me with him, and then she thought he should be
put down by law. Explorers' mothers also interested her very much;
the books might tell her nothing about them, but she could create
them for herself and wring her hands in sympathy with them when
they had got no news of him for six months. Yet there were times
when she grudged him to them - as the day when he returned
victorious. Then what was before her eyes was not the son coming
marching home again but an old woman peering for him round the
window curtain and trying not to look uplifted. The newspaper
reports would be about the son, but my mother's comment was 'She's
a proud woman this night.'

We read many books together when I was a boy, 'Robinson Crusoe'
being the first (and the second), and the 'Arabian Nights' should