“I am an artist too!” I said.  “My name is Margot Tennant.  I suppose you thought I was the gardener’s daughter, did you?”

He gave a circulating smile, finishing on my turban, and said: 

“To tell you the honest truth, I had no idea what you were!”

My earliest sorrow was when I was stealing peaches in the conservatory and my little dog was caught in a trap set for rats.  He was badly hurt before I could squeeze under the glass slides to save him.  I was betrayed by my screams for help and caught in the peach-house by the gardener.  I was punished and put to bed, as the large peaches were to have been shown in Edinburgh and I had eaten five.

We had a dancing-class at the minister’s and an arithmetic-class in our schoolroom.  I was as good at the Manse as I was bad at my sums; and poor Mr. Menzies, the Traquair schoolmaster, had eventually to beg my mother to withdraw me from the class, as I kept them all back.  To my delight I was withdrawn; and from that day to this I have never added a single row of figures.

I showed a remarkable proficiency in dancing and could lift both my feet to the level of my eyebrows with disconcerting ease.  Mrs. Wallace, the minister’s wife, was shocked and said: 

“Look at Margot with her Frenchified airs!”

I pondered often and long over this, the first remark about myself that I can ever remember.  Some one said to me: 

“Does your hair curl naturally?”

To which I replied: 

“I don’t know, but I will ask.”

I was unaware of myself and had not the slightest idea what “curling naturally” meant.

We had two best dresses:  one made in London, which we only wore on great occasions; the other made by my nurse, in which we went down to dessert.  These dresses gave me my first impression of civilised life.  Just as the Speaker, before clearing the House, spies strangers, so, when I saw my black velvet skirt and pink Garibaldi put out on the bed, I knew that something was up!  The nursery confection was of white alpaca, piped with pink, and did not inspire the same excitement and confidence.

We saw little of our mother in our youth and I asked Laura one day if she thought she said her prayers; I would not have remembered this had it not been that Laura was profoundly shocked.  The question was quite uncalled for and had no ulterior motive, but I never remembered my mother or any one else talking to us about the Bible or hearing us our prayers.  Nevertheless we were all deeply religious, by which no one need infer that we were good.  There was one service a week, held on Sundays, in Traquair Kirk, which every one went to; and the shepherds’ dogs kept close to their masters’ plaids, hung over the high box-pews, all the way down the aisle.  I have heard many fine sermons in Scotland, but our minister was not a good preacher; and we were often dissolved in laughter, sitting in the square family pew in the gallery.  My father closed his eyes tightly all through the sermon, leaning his head on his hand.