In this strange household the advent of a child was not welcomed, but was borne with resignation.  The event was thus recorded in my Father’s diary: 

‘E. delivered of a son.  Received green swallow from Jamaica.’

This entry has caused amusement, as showing that he was as much interested in the bird as in the boy.  But this does not follow; what the wording exemplifies is my Father’s extreme punctilio.  The green swallow arrived later in the day than the son, and the earlier visitor was therefore recorded first; my Father was scrupulous in every species of arrangement.

Long afterwards, my Father told me that my Mother suffered much in giving birth to me, and that, uttering no cry, I appeared to be dead.  I was laid, with scant care, on another bed in the room, while all anxiety and attention were concentrated on my Mother.  An old woman who happened to be there, and who was unemployed, turned her thoughts to me, and tried to awake in me a spark of vitality.  She succeeded, and she was afterwards complimented by the doctor on her cleverness.  My Father could not—­when he told me the story—­recollect the name of my preserver.  I have often longed to know who she was.  For all the rapture of life, for all its turmoils, its anxious desires, its manifold pleasures, and even for its sorrow and suffering, I bless and praise that anonymous old lady from the bottom of my heart.

It was six weeks before my Mother was able to leave her room.  The occasion was made a solemn one, and was attended by a species of Churching.  Mr. Balfour, a valued minister of the denomination, held a private service in the parlour, and ’prayed for our child, that he may be the Lord’s’.  This was the opening act of that ‘dedication’ which was never henceforward forgotten, and of which the following pages will endeavour to describe the results.  Around my tender and unconscious spirit was flung the luminous web, the light and elastic but impermeable veil, which it was hoped would keep me ‘unspotted from the world’.

Until this time my Father’s mother had lived in the house and taken the domestic charges of it on her own shoulders.  She now consented to leave us to ourselves.  There is no question that her exodus was a relief to my Mother, since my paternal grandmother was a strong and masterful woman, buxom, choleric and practical, for whom the interests of the mind did not exist.  Her daughter-in-law, gentle as she was, and ethereal in manner and appearance—­ strangely contrasted (no doubt), in her tinctures of gold hair and white skin, with my grandmother’s bold carnations and black tresses—­was yet possessed of a will like tempered steel.  They were better friends apart, with my grandmother lodged hard by, in a bright room, her household gods and bits of excellent eighteenth-century furniture around her, her miniatures and sparkling china arranged on shelves.