"What is it, then, for goodness
sake?" asked mother.

But I would not tell. I could not
tell. How could I say that the daughter
of the Bad Madigans was the first real
and satisfying playmate I had ever
had?



IV

FAME

AS I remember the boys and girls
who grew up with me, I think of
them as artists, or actors, or travellers,
or rich merchants. Each of us, by the
time we were half through grammar
school, had selected a career. So far
as I recollect, this career had very lit-
tle to do with our abilities. We merely
chose something that suited us. Our
energy and our vanity crystallised into
particular shapes. There was a sort of
religion abroad in the West at that time
that a person could do almost anything
he set out to do. The older people, as