`Has a profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook' said one of the critics quoted at the end of the book that I
had chosen. The wind and the rain in the chimney had not abated, but
the fire was bearing up bravely. So would I. I would read cheerfully
and without prejudice. I poked the fire and, pushing my chair slightly
back, lest the heat should warp the book's covers, began Chapter I. A
woman sat writing in a summer-house at the end of a small garden that
overlooked a great valley in Surrey. The description of her was
calculated to make her very admirable--a thorough woman, not strictly
beautiful, but likely to be thought beautiful by those who knew her
well; not dressed as though she gave much heed to her clothes, but
dressed in a fashion that exactly harmonised with her special type.
Her pen `travelled' rapidly across the foolscap, and while it did so
she was described in more and more detail. But at length she came to a
`knotty point' in what she was writing. She paused, she pushed back
the hair from her temples, she looked forth at the valley; and now the
landscape was described, but not at all exhaustively, it, for the
writer soon overcame her difficulty, and her pen travelled faster than
ever, till suddenly there was a cry of `Mammy!' and in rushed a seven-
year-old child, in conjunction with whom she was more than ever
admirable; after which the narrative skipped back across eight years,
and the woman became a girl, giving as yet no token of future eminence
in literature but--I had an impulse which I obeyed almost before I
was, conscious of it.
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