She did not know when I was born.

She died a few minutes after I uttered my first cry.
I know only one thing more, and that Jean Braidfute told me after I grew up.

Jean had been my father's nursery governess when he wore his first kilts, and she loved my mother fondly.
"I knelt by her bed and held her hand and watched her face for three hours after they first laid her down," she said.

"And my eyes were so near her every moment that I saw a thing the others did not know her well enough, or love her well enough, to see.
"The first hour she was like a dead thing--aye, like a dead thing that had never lived.

But when the hand of the clock passed the last second, and the new hour began, I bent closer to her because I saw a change stealing over her.