'It is a queer thing,' she would say softly, 'that near everything you write is about this bit place.

You little expected that when you began.

I mind well the time when it never entered your head, any more than mine, that you could write a page about our squares and wynds.

I wonder how it has come about ?' There was a time when I could not have answered that question, but that time had long passed.

'I suppose, mother, it was because you were most at home in your own town, and there was never much pleasure to me in writing of people who could not have known you, nor of squares and wynds you never passed through, nor of a country-side where you never carried your father's dinner in a flagon.