This she said to humour me.
Presently she would slip upstairs to announce triumphantly, 'You are in again!' Or in the small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, 'That lassie is very natural.

Some of the ways you say she had--your mother had them just the same.

Did you ever notice what an extraordinary woman your mother is ?' Then would I seek my mother for comfort.

She was the more ready to give it because of her profound conviction that if I was found out--that is, if readers discovered how frequently and in how many guises she appeared in my books--the affair would become a public scandal.
'You see Jess is not really you,' I begin inquiringly.
'Oh no, she is another kind of woman altogether,' my mother says, and then spoils the compliment by adding naively, 'She had but two rooms and I have six.' I sigh.

'Without counting the pantry, and it's a great big pantry,' she mutters.
This was not the sort of difference I could greatly plume myself upon, and honesty would force me to say, 'As far as that goes, there was a time when you had but two rooms yourself--' 'That's long since,' she breaks in.