en
young!) she and her husband, with their one boy, had come to her old
home near Carlisle. This one boy had grown up to marry--Somebody, or,
according to the standards of Grandma, Nobody, a creature beyond the
pale. The bride must have died soon, for even Barrie's elastic memory,
which could recall first steps taken alone and first words spoken
unprompted, had no niche in it for a mother's image, though father's
portrait was almost painfully distinct. It presented a young man very
tall, very thin, very sad, very dark. The frame for this portrait was
the black oak of the library wainscoting, picked out with the faded gold
on backs of books in a uniform binding of brown leather. Once a day
Barrie had been escorted by her nurse to the door of the library and
left to the tender mercies of this sad young man, who raised his eyes
resignedly from reading or writing to emit a "How do you do?" as if she
were a grown-up stranger. After this question and a suitable reply, not
much conversation followed, for neither could think of anything to say.
After an interval of strained politeness, the child was dismissed to
play or lessons--generally lessons, even from the first, for play had
never been considered of importance in Hillard House. It was nobler, in
the estimation of Grandma, and perhaps of father, to learn how to spell
"the fat cat sat on the black rug," rather than to sprawl personally on
the black rug, sporting in company with the fat cat.

One day, Barrie remembered, she had been told that father was ill and
she could not bid him good morning. She had been treacherously glad, for
father was depressing; but when days passed and she was still kept from
him, it occurred to her that after all father was much, much nicer than
Grandma, and that his eyes, though sad, were kind. The next and last
time she ever saw him, the kind sad eyes were shut, and he was lying in
a queer bed, like a box. He was white as a doll made of porcelain which
he had once given her, and Grandma, who led the child into his room,
said that he was dead. The sleeping figure in the box was only the body,
and the soul had gone to heaven. Heaven, according to Grandma, who wore
black and had red rims round her eyes, was a place high up above the sky
where if you were a sheep you played constantly on a harp and sang
songs. If you were a goat, you did not get there at all, which might
have been preferable, except for the fact that being a goat doomed you
to burn