Margaret Ogilvy | Page 3

taxes. If you don't derive profits, no royalty is due.
Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois
Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine
College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Margaret Ogilvy by her Son - J. M. Barrie. 1897 edition. Scanned and
proofed by David Price, email [email protected]

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 the chairs, or sitting on them regally, or withdrawing and re-
opening the door suddenly to take the six by surprise. And then, I think,
a shawl was flung over her (it is strange to me to think it was not I who
ran after her with the shawl), and she was escorted sternly back to bed
and reminded that she had promised not to budge, to which her reply
was probably that she had been gone but an instant, and the implication

that therefore she had not been gone at all. Thus was one little bit of her
revealed to me at once: I wonder if I took note of it. Neighbours came
in to see the boy and the chairs. I wonder if she deceived me when she
affected to think that there were others like us, or whether I saw
through her from the first, she was so easily seen through. When she
seemed to agree with them that it would be impossible to give me a
college education, was I so easily taken in, or did I know already what
ambitions burned behind that dear face? when they spoke of the chairs
as the goal quickly reached, was I such a newcomer that her timid lips
must say 'They are but a beginning' before I heard the words? And
when we were left together, did I laugh at the great things that were in
her mind, or had she to whisper them to me first, and then did I put my
arm round her and tell her that I would help? Thus it was for such a
long time: it is strange to me to feel that it was not so from the
beginning.
It is all guess-work for six years, and she whom I see in them is the
woman who came suddenly into view when they were at an end. Her
timid lips I have said, but they were not timid then, and when I knew
her the timid lips had come. The soft face - they say the face was not so
soft then. The shawl that was flung over her - we had not begun to hunt
her with a shawl, nor to make our bodies a screen between her and the
draughts, nor to creep into her room a score of times in the night to
stand looking at her as she slept. We did not see her becoming little
then, nor sharply turn our heads when she said wonderingly how small
her arms had grown. In her happiest moments - and never was a
happier woman - her mouth did not of a sudden begin to twitch, and
tears to lie on the mute blue eyes in which I have read all I know and
would ever care to write. For when you looked into my mother's eyes
you knew, as if He had told you, why God