My defence was that to act Shakespeare (whom everyone respects next to the bible), I should have to don doublet and hose. Me acting SHAKESPEARE! Ma was shocked to discover such foolishness in me. I must really be mad. This put me in a fantod so that Ma reported me to Pa and threatened to enlist the clergyman to exorcise the devil in me.

“Now,” said Pa, when left to rebuke me, “you must be careful not to upset your mother. The game is not worth the candle.” The only thing wrong in the affair was that I had upset Ma: I must never upset Ma: she was a wonderful woman.

“She is not always right just because she is my mother,” I grumbled.

“The law is that the Queen can do no wrong,” said Pa.

“Yes, but a Queen is a being raised to false majesty.”

“Have you forgotten that a woman’s kingdom is the home?”

Pa had a twinkle in his eyes, but I refused to melt. EXPERIENCE was certainly teaching me that a sense of humour is too often an advantage to the one who hasn’t it. A lack of a sense of humour, like a lack of good-temper, can be used as a waddy.

Later Ma upbraided Pa because he had not severely trounced me. Pa said, “I see nothing wrong with the child’s intellect except that it is too bright for its uses.”

“If she comes to harm, you must take the consequences,” said Ma. “I find her with a boy—swept up from the gutter or somewhere—in a pair of trousers exposing her flesh.”

“Eustace is a fine boy. He only needs a chance.”

“A chance to get into mischief and laziness. Dear me, where would a child of mine get notions of the stage—the lowest …”

Pa began to rub his hair gently on end and remarked, “I suppose a sea bird reared in the middle of a desert would retain aquatic tendencies.”

“She does not take after my side of the house,” said Ma.

She was too perturbed about my aberration, as she called it, to leave me to Pa. She “took me in hand”. I resented the evil she discerned in me, felt that she was unfair, but there was no appeal against Ma. She disabused my mind of any notion that I could go upon the stage. She ridiculed my every feature and every contour. Ma believes in finishing things. She says it is a sign of a weak mind to begin things and leave them half done. Ma has no weakness of mind. She always finishes the hardest task. She finished me to squashation like a sucked gooseberry. I often longed for death or a nunnery as an escape from my depressing lack of desirable attributes.

But I was freed from notions. Never again would I have the conceit and delusions to think of the stage. Never would I have the effrontery to seek any but the humblest jobs. Should anyone flatter me I would know them for what they were at the first soft word. Ma had ensured me against making a fool of myself by attempting flights, but she had not helped me towards contentment. The native wombat role for me henceforth. Those who are low need fear no fall. I had always jeered at the Blackshaws, our neighbours, by saying they would never make fools of themselves and by adding that those who had not enough stuffing to make fools of themselves at times would never make anything else of themselves.