'
'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 that plan you will never need to try another.'
'How artful you are, mother - you with your soft face! Do you not
think shame?'
'Pooh!' says my mother brazenly.
'I can see the reason why you are so popular with men.'
'Ay, you can see it, but they never will.'
'Well, how would you dress yourself if you were going to that
editor's office?'
'Of course I would wear my silk and my Sabbath bonnet.'
'It is you who are shortsighted now, mother. I tell you, you would
manage him better if you just put on your old grey shawl and one of
your bonny white mutches, and went in half smiling and half timid
and said, "I am the mother of him that writes about the Auld
Lichts, and I want you to promise that he will never have to sleep
in the open air."'
But my mother would shake her head at this, and reply almost hotly,
'I tell you if I ever go into that man's office, I go in silk.'
I wrote and asked the editor if I should come to London, and he
said No, so I went, laden with charges from my mother to walk in
the middle of the street (they jump out on you as you are turning a
corner), never to venture forth after sunset, and always to lock up
everything (I who could never lock up anything, except my heart in
company).
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