t would be pleasant to pretend that Jenny gazed at the
stars, clapping a welcome to Caesiopea and singing to the Pleiades; but,
as a matter of fact, it was not very easy to regard the heavens from the
kitchen window of Number Seventeen. I should be happy to say that
flowers were a joy to her from the beginning, but very few flowers came
to Hagworth Street--groundsel for the canary sometimes, and plantains,
but not much else. The main interest of Jenny's earliest days lay rather
with her mother than herself.

The visit of the three old aunts roused Mrs. Raeburn to express her
imagination at first, but gradually assumed a commonplace character as
the months rolled by without another visit and as Jenny, with a chair
pushed before her, learned to walk rather earlier than most children,
but showed no other sign of suffering or benefiting by that grim
intervention. Perhaps, when she pushed her wooden guide so quickly along
the landing that chair and child bumped together down every stair, her
mother was inclined to think she was lucky not to be killed. Anyway, she
said so to the child, who was shrieking on the mat in the hall; and in
after years Jenny could remember the painful incident. Indeed, that and
a backward splash into the washtub on the first occasion of wearing a
frock of damson velveteen, were the only events of her earliest life
that impressed themselves at all sharply or completely upon her mind.
Through time's distorted haze she could also vaguely recall an adventure
with treacle when, egged on by Alfie, she had explored the darkness of
an inset cupboard and wedged the stolen tin of golden syrup so tightly
round her silvery curls that Alfie had shouted for help. The sensation
of the sticky substance trickling down her face in numerous thin streams
remained with her always.

People were only realized in portions. For example, Ruby O'Connor
existed as a rough, red hand, descending upon her suddenly in the midst
of baby enjoyments. Alfie and Edie were two noises, acquiring with
greater nearness the character of predatory birds. That is to say, in
Jenny's mind the intimate approach of either always announced loss or
interruption of a pleasure. Her father she first apprehended as a pair
of legs forming a gigantic archway, vast as the Colossus of Rhodes must
have loomed to the triremes of the Confederacy. Better than kisses or
admonitions, she remembered her mother's skirt, whether as support or
sanctuary. The rest o