Her husband was a widower with three children already before he took her in marriage.  He was a railroad engineer who drove a switch engine in the yards.  He was as short as she was tall ... a diminutive man, but virile ... with a deep, hoarse voice resonant like a foghorn.  The little man had an enormous chest matted with dense, black hair.  It would almost have made a whole head of hair for an average man.  One could always see this hair because he was proud of its possession, thought it denoted virility and strength, and wore his shirt open at the neck, and several buttons lower, in order to reveal his full hirsuteness.

Millie had already given birth to two children of her own, by him.  And she toiled about the house at endless duties, day and night, happy with him, and loving his children and hers with an equal love.  And being adored in turn by them.

It was “Ma!” here and “Ma!” there ... the voices of the children ever calling for her....  And she, running about, waiting on the youngsters, baking ovensful of bread, sewing, scrubbing, dusting ... and talking, talking, talking all the time she flew about at her ceaseless work....

Uncle Dick loved his joke, and the broader the better.  As I sat across the table from him, at mealtimes, and looked into his amused, small twinkling eyes, I thought continually of the Miller in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales....

Millie, too, was not slow at having her joke.  She was roughly affectionate of me, in memory of old days.  And she continually asked me, with loud, enjoying laughter, if I remembered this, that, and the other bad (Rabelaisan) trick I had played on her back in Mornington....

* * * * *

But I was glad to see Haberford and the East again.  I was all over my desire to die a poet, and young....  Principal Balling had me come to see him.  He examined me in Latin and in English and History.  He found that, from study by myself, I had prepared so that I was more than able to pass in these subjects.  But when it came to mathematics I was no less than an idiot.  He informed my father that he had been mistaken in me, before ... that he had given me a too cursory look-over, judging me after the usual run ... he announced that he would admit me as special student at the Keeley Heights High School.

The one thing High School gave me—­my Winter there—­was Shelley.  In English we touched on him briefly, mainly emphasising his Skylark.  It was his Ode to the West Wind that made me want more of him ... with his complete works I made myself a nuisance in class, never paying attention to what anyone said or did, but sitting there like a man in a trance, and, with Shelley, dreaming beautiful dreams of revolutionising the world.