An hour before the guests began to arrive I would station myself at the window, to watch for them.

I loved to see the ladies stepping primly down the garden path in their best gowns, between the stiff borders of box and privet, stopping to admire mother's hollyhocks or laburnum bushes.
"Children were seen and not heard in those days and as soon as they had been ushered into the guest chamber, where they laid aside their wraps, and had seated themselves in the parlour, I used to carry my little stool in and sit down in one corner to listen.
"One autumn it happened that for several reasons mother had had no invited company for weeks.

I was hungry for some of the tarts and marmalade that I knew would appear if the guests would only arrive, and one night a plan came into my head that seemed to me so clever that I could hardly wait for morning to come, in order that I might carry it out.
"Mother sent me on an errand to the village store next day, and on the way I stopped at the doctor's house.

I could scarcely reach the great brass knocker on the front door, but when I did, standing on tiptoe, it sent such a loud clamour through the house that my heart jumped up in my throat, and I was minded to run away.

But before I could do that the doctor's wife opened the door.