racking her brains, by request, for memories I might convert into
articles, and they came to me in letters which she dictated to my
sisters. How well I could hear her sayings between the lines: 'But
the editor-man will never stand that, it's perfect blethers' - 'By
this post it must go, I tell you; we must take the editor when he's
hungry - we canna be blamed for it, can we? he prints them of his
free will, so the wite is his' - 'But I'm near terrified. - If
London folk reads them we're done for.' And I was sounded as to
the advisability of sending him a present of a lippie of
shortbread, which was to be her crafty way of getting round him.
By this time, though my mother and I were hundreds of miles apart,
you may picture us waving our hands to each other across country,
and shouting 'Hurrah!' You may also picture the editor in his
office thinking he was behaving like a shrewd man of business, and
unconscious that up in the north there was an elderly lady
chuckling so much at him that she could scarcely scrape the
potatoes.

I was now able to see my mother again, and the park seats no longer
loomed so prominent in our map of London. Still, there they were,
and it was with an effort that she summoned up courage to let me
go. She feared changes, and who could tell that the editor would
continue to be kind? Perhaps when he saw me -

She seemed to be very much afraid of his seeing me, and this, I
would point out, was a reflection on my appearance or my manner.

No, what she meant was that I looked so young, and - and that would
take him aback, for had I not written as an aged man?