He came up to the table looking magnificent—­almost turkey-like in his proportions.

“Hasn’t this chicken rather an odd smell?” said our visitor.

“How can you!” I answered.  “It must be quite fresh—­it’s Sultan!”

However, when we began to carve, the smell grew more and more potent.

I had cooked Sultan without taking out his in’ards!

There was no dinner that day except bread-sauce, beautifully made, well-cooked vegetables, and pastry like the foam of the sea.  I had a wonderful hand for pastry!

My hour of rising at this pleasant place near Mackery End in Hertfordshire was six.  Then I washed the babies.  I had a perfect mania for washing everything and everybody.  We had one little servant, and I insisted on washing her head.  Her mother came up from the village to protest.

“Never washed her head in my life.  Never washed any of my children’s heads.  And just look at their splendid hair!”

After the washing I fed the animals.  There were two hundred ducks and fowls to feed, as well as the children.  By the time I had done this, and cooked the dinner, the morning had flown away.  After the midday meal I sewed.  Sometimes I drove out in the pony-cart.  And in the evening I walked across the common to fetch the milk.  The babies used to roam where they liked on this common in charge of a bulldog, while I sat and read.

I studied cookery-books instead of parts—­Mrs. Beeton instead of Shakespeare!

Of course, I thought my children the most brilliant and beautiful children in the world, and, indeed, “this side idolatry,” they were exceptional, and they had an exceptional bringing up.  They were allowed no rubbishy picture-books, but from the first Japanese prints and fans lined their nursery walls, and Walter Crane was their classic.  If injudicious friends gave the wrong sort of present, it was promptly burned.  A mechanical mouse in which Edy, my little daughter, showed keen interest and delight, was taken away as being “realistic and common.”  Only wooden toys were allowed.  This severe training proved so effective that when a doll dressed in a violent pink silk dress was given to Edy, she said it was “vulgar”!

By that time she had found a tongue, but until she was two years old she never spoke a word, though she seemed to notice everything with her grave dark eyes.  We were out driving when I heard her voice for the first time: 

“There’s some more.”

She spoke quite distinctly.  It was almost uncanny.

“More what?” I asked in a trembling voice, afraid that having delivered herself once, she might lapse into dumbness.

“Birds!”

The nursemaid, Essie, described Edy tersely as “a piece,” while Teddy, who was adored by every one because he was fat and fair and angelic-looking, she called “the feather of England.”

“The feather of England” was considered by his sister a great coward.  She used to hit him on the head with a wooden spoon for crying, and exhort him, when he said, “Master Teddy afraid of the dark,” to be a woman!