Transcribed from the 1897 Chatto & Windus edition by DavidPrice,
MARGARET OGILVY
by herson
J. M. BARRIE
Second Edition
Completing Twentieth Thousand
london
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 paternoster row
1897
to
the memory of
my sister
Jane Ann
CHAPTER I—HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE
On the day I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, andin our little house it was an event, the first great victory in awoman’s long campaign; how they had been laboured for, thepound-note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxietythere was about the purchase, the show they made in possession ofthe west room, my father’s unnatural coolness when hebrought them in (but his face was white)—I so often heardthe tale afterwards, and shared as boy and man in so many similartriumphs, that the coming of the chairs seems to be something Iremember, as if I had jumped out of bed on that first day, andrun ben to see how they looked. I am sure my mother’sfeet were ettling to be ben long before they could be trusted,and that the moment after she was left alone with me she wasdiscovered barefooted in the west room, doctoring a scar (whichshe had been the first to detect) on one of the chairs, orsitting on them regally, or withdrawing and re-opening the doorsuddenly to take the six by surprise. And then, I think, ashawl was flung over her (it is strange to me to think it was notI who ran after her with the shawl), and she was escorted sternlyback to bed and reminded that she had promised not to budge, towhich her reply was probably that she had been gone but aninstant, and the implication that therefore she had not been goneat all. Thus was one little bit of her revealed to me atonce: I wonder if I took note of it. Neighbours came in tosee the boy and the chairs. I wonder if she deceived mewhen she affected to think that there were others like us, orwhether I saw through her from the first, she was so easily seenthrough. When she seemed to agree with them that it wouldbe impossible to give me a college education, was I so easilytaken in, or did I know already what ambitions burned behind thatdear face? when they spoke of the chairs as the goal quicklyreached, was I such a newcomer that her timid lips must say‘They are but a beginning’ before I heard thewords? And when we were left together, did I laugh at thegreat things that were in her mind, or had she to whisper them tome first, and then did I put my arm round her and tell her that Iwould help? Thus it was for such a long time: it is strangeto me to feel that it was not so from the beginning.
It is all guess-work for six years, and she whom I see in themis the woman who came suddenly into view when they were at anend. Her timid lips I have said, but they were not timidthen, and when I knew her the timid lips had come. The softface—t