Margaret Ogilvy by her Son - J. M. Barrie. 1897 edition.
Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





MARGARET OGILVY





CHAPTER I - HOW MY MOTHER GOT HER SOFT FACE


On the day I was born we bought six hair-bottomed chairs, and in
our little house it was an event, the first great victory in a
woman's long campaign; how they had been laboured for, the pound-
note and the thirty threepenny-bits they cost, what anxiety there
was about the purchase, the show they made in possession of the
west room, my father's unnatural coolness when he brought them in
(but his face was white) - I so often heard the tale afterwards,
and shared as boy and man in so many similar triumphs, that the
coming of the chairs seems to be something I remember, as if I had
jumped out of bed on that first day, and run ben to see how they
looked. I am sure my mother's feet were ettling to be ben long
before they could be trusted, and that the moment after she was
left alone with me she was discovered barefooted in the west room,
doctoring a scar (which she had been the first to detect) on one of