'Just as Jess would have been fidgeting to show off her eleven and
a bit!'

It seems advisable to jump to another book; not to my first,
because - well, as it was my first there would naturally be
something of my mother in it, and not to the second, as it was my
first novel and not much esteemed even in our family. (But the
little touches of my mother in it are not so bad.) Let us try the
story about the minister.

My mother's first remark is decidedly damping. 'Many a time in my
young days,' she says, 'I played about the Auld Licht manse, but I
little thought I should live to be the mistress of it!'

'But Margaret is not you.'

'N-no, oh no. She had a very different life from mine. I never
let on to a soul that she is me!'

'She was not meant to be you when I began. Mother, what a way you
have of coming creeping in!'

'You should keep better watch on yourself.'

'Perhaps if I had called Margaret by some other name - '

'I should have seen through her just the same. As soon as I heard
she was the mother I began to laugh. In some ways, though, she's
no' so very like me. She was long in finding out about Babbie.
I'se uphaud I should have been quicker.'