She did me a good turn here, for, though I would not have married a groom, I might have married the wrong man and, in any case, interference would have been cramping to me.

I have copied out of my diary what I wrote about my mother when she died.

“January 21st, 1895.

“Mamma is dead.  She died this morning and Glen isn’t my home any more:  I feel as if I should be ‘received’ here in future, instead of finding my own darling, tender little mother, who wanted arranging for and caring for and to whom my gossipy trivialities were precious and all my love-stories a trust.  How I wish I could say sincerely that I had understood her nature and sympathised with her and never felt hurt by anything she could say and had eagerly shown my love and sought hers. ...  Lucky Lucy!  She can say this, but I do not think that I can.

“Mamma’s life and death have taught me several things.  Her sincerity and absence of vanity and worldliness were her really striking qualities.  Her power of suffering passively, without letting any one into her secret, was carried to a fault.  We who longed to share some part, however small, of the burden of her emotion were not allowed to do so.  This reserve to the last hour of her life remained her inexorable rule and habit.  It arose from a wish to spare other people and fear of herself and her own feelings.  To spare others was her ideal.  Another characteristic was her pity for the obscure, the dull and the poor.  The postman in winter ought to have fur-lined gloves; and we must send our Christmas letters and parcels before or after the busy days.  Lord Napier’s [Footnote:  Lord Napier and Ettrick, father of Mark Napier.] coachman had never seen a comet; she would write and tell him what day it was prophesied.  The lame girl at the lodge must be picked up in the brougham and taken for a drive, etc. ...

“She despised any one who was afraid of infection and was singularly ignorant on questions of health; she knew little or nothing of medicine and never believed in doctors; she made an exception of Sir James Simpson, who was her friend.  She told me that he had said there was a great deal of nonsense talked about health and diet: 

“’If the fire is low, it does not matter whether you stir it with the poker or the tongs.’

“She believed firmly in cold water and thought that most illnesses came from ‘checked perspiration.’

“She loved happy people—­people with courage and go and what she called ’nature’—­and said many good things.  Of Mark Napier:  ’He had so much nature, I am sure he had a Neapolitan wet-nurse’ (here she was right).  Of Charty:  ‘She has so much social courage.’  Of Aunt Marion [Footnote:  My father’s sister, Mrs. Wallace.]:  ’She is unfortunately inferior.’  Of Lucy’s early friends:  ’Lucy’s trumpery girls.’

“Mamma was not at all spiritual, nor had she much intellectual imagination, but she believed firmly in God and was profoundly sorry for those who did not.  She was full of admiration for religious people.  Laura’s prayer against high spirits she thought so wonderful that she kept it in a book near her bed.