one out of doors do something that made the others laugh I
immediately hastened to that dark room and did it before her. I
suppose I was an odd little figure; I have been told that my
anxiety to brighten her gave my face a strained look and put a
tremor into the joke (I would stand on my head in the bed, my feet
against the wall, and then cry excitedly, 'Are you laughing,
mother?') - and perhaps what made her laugh was something I was
unconscious of, but she did laugh suddenly now and then, whereupon
I screamed exultantly to that dear sister, who was ever in waiting,
to come and see the sight, but by the time she came the soft face
was wet again. Thus I was deprived of some of my glory, and I
remember once only making her laugh before witnesses. I kept a
record of her laughs on a piece of paper, a stroke for each, and it
was my custom to show this proudly to the doctor every morning.
There were five strokes the first time I slipped it into his hand,
and when their meaning was explained to him he laughed so
boisterously, that I cried, 'I wish that was one of hers!' Then he
was sympathetic, and asked me if my mother had seen the paper yet,
and when I shook my head he said that if I showed it to her now and
told her that these were her five laughs he thought I might win
another. I had less confidence, but he was the mysterious man whom
you ran for in the dead of night (you flung sand at his window to
waken him, and if it was only toothache he extracted the tooth
through the open window, but when it was something sterner he was
with you in the dark square at once, like a man who slept in his
topcoat), so I did as he bade me, and not only did she laugh then
but again when I put the laugh down, so that though it was really
one laugh with a tear in the middle I counted it as two.

It was doubtless that same sister who told me not to sulk when my