you must serve faithfully while you are hers, and you must seek her
out and make much of her, and, until you can rely on her good-
nature (note this), not a word about the other lady. When at last
she took me in I grew so fond of her that I called her by the
other's name, and even now I think at times that there was more fun
in the little sister, but I began by wooing her with contributions
that were all misfits. In an old book I find columns of notes
about works projected at this time, nearly all to consist of essays
on deeply uninteresting subjects; the lightest was to be a volume
on the older satirists, beginning with Skelton and Tom Nash - the
half of that manuscript still lies in a dusty chest - the only
story was about Mary Queen of Scots, who was also the subject of
many unwritten papers. Queen Mary seems to have been luring me to
my undoing ever since I saw Holyrood, and I have a horrid fear that
I may write that novel yet. That anything could be written about
my native place never struck me. We had read somewhere that a
novelist is better equipped than most of his trade if he knows
himself and one woman, and my mother said, 'You know yourself, for
everybody must know himself' (there never was a woman who knew less
about herself than she), and she would add dolefully, 'But I doubt
I'm the only woman you know well.'

'Then I must make you my heroine,' I said lightly.

'A gey auld-farrant-like heroine!' she said, and we both laughed at
the notion - so little did we read the future.

Thus it is obvious what were my qualifications when I was rashly
engaged as a leader-writer (it was my sister who saw the
advertisement) on an English provincial paper. At the moment I was