Chapter 4 - Page 2

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?

'But he knows my age, mother.'

'I'm glad of that, but maybe he wouldna like you when he saw you.'

'Oh, it is my manner, then!'

'I dinna say that, but - '

Here my sister would break in: 'The short and the long of it is
just this, she thinks nobody has such manners as herself. Can you
deny it, you vain woman?' My mother would deny it vigorously.

'You stand there,' my sister would say with affected scorn, 'and
tell me you don't think you could get the better of that man
quicker than any of us?'

'Sal, I'm thinking I could manage him,' says my mother, with a
chuckle.

'How would you set about it?'

Then my mother would begin to laugh. 'I would find out first if he
had a family, and then I would say they were the finest family in
London.'

'Yes, that is just what you would do, you cunning woman! But if he
has no family?'

'I would say what great men editors are!'

'He would see through you.'

'Not he!'

'You don't understand that what imposes on common folk would never
hoodwink an editor.'

'That's where you are wrong. Gentle or simple, stupid or clever,
the men are all alike in the hands of a woman that flatters them.'

'Ah, I'm sure there are better ways of getting round an editor than
that.'

'I daresay there are,' my mother would say with conviction, 'but if
you try