On several occasions the same man proposed to both of us, and we had to find out from each other what our intentions were.

I only remember being hurt by Laura on one occasion and it came about in this way.  We were always dressed alike, and as we were the same size; “M” and “L” had to be written in our clothes as we grew older.

One day, about the time of which I am writing, I was thirteen; I took a letter out of the pocket of what I thought was my skirt and read it; it was from Laura to my eldest sister Posie and, though I do not remember it all, one sentence was burnt into me: 

“Does it not seem extraordinary that Margot should be teaching a Sunday class?”

I wondered why any one should think it extraordinary!  I went upstairs and cried in a small black cupboard, where I generally disappeared when life seemed too much for me.

The Sunday class I taught need have disturbed no one, for I regret to relate that, after a striking lesson on the birth of Christ, when I asked my pupils who the Virgin was, one of the most promising said: 

“Queen Victoria!”

The idea had evidently gone abroad that I was a frivolous character; this hurt and surprised me.  Naughtiness and frivolity are different, and I was always deeply in earnest.

Laura was more gentle than I was; and her goodness resolved itself into greater activity.

She and I belonged to a reading-class.  I read more than she did and at greater speed, but we were all readers and profited by a climate which kept us indoors and a fine library.  The class obliged us to read an hour a day, which could not be called excessive, but the real test was doing the same thing at the same time.  I would have preferred three or four hours’ reading on wet days and none on fine, But not so our Edinburgh tutor.

Laura started the Girls’ Friendly Society in the village, which was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality.  We drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along icy roads.  These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks are among my most precious recollections.

At the meetings—­after reading aloud to the girls while they sewed and knitted—­Laura would address them.  She gave a sort of lesson, moral, social and religious, and they all adored her.  More remarkable at her age than speaking to mill-girls were her Sunday classes at Glen, in the housekeeper’s room.  I do not know one girl now of any age—­Laura was only sixteen—­who could talk on religious subjects with profit to the butler, housekeeper and maids, or to any grown-up people, on a Sunday afternoon.

Compared with what the young men have written and published during this war, Laura’s literary promise was not great; both her prose and her poetry were less remarkable than her conversation.

She was not so good a judge of character as I was and took many a goose for a swan, but, in consequence of this, she made people of both sexes—­and even all ages—­twice as good, clever and delightful as they would otherwise have been.