“Don’t you tell anyone where you’ve been,” she warned me; and the secrecy made it the more exciting.

There was ginger beer, sherbet and lemonade to be bought, and once we tossed with a pieman. It was an old custom with piemen, Fanny told me; and we stood and watched a young coster and his girl toss the penny and lose, so that they got no pie; Fanny, greatly daring, tossed her penny and we won. We carried the pie to St. James’s Park and sat by the pond devouring every morsel.

“But you haven’t seen the market of a Saturday night That’s the time,” said Fanny. “Perhaps when you’re older …”

It was something to plan for.

I loved the market with its costermongers, whose faces portrayed all the parts one would find in a morality play. There was lust and greed, sloth and cunning in those faces; and occasionally saintliness. Fanny was most excited by the tricksters; she would want to stand and watch the juggler add the conjuror, the sword- and flame-swallowers.

Fanny had shown me a new world, which was right on our doorsteps, although so many people seemed unaware of it The only occasion when the two worlds met was on a Sunday afternoon when, sitting at my window, I would hear the bell of the muffin man and see him coming across the square with his tray on his head and the white-capped and -aproned maids running out to buy from him.

That was my life up to the night of the ball.

On such occasions everyone in the house was pressed into helping, and Fanny was called into the kitchen for the afternoon and evening; Miss James was helping the housekeeper, and I was alone.

My Aunt Clarissa was staying with us because my father needed a hostess. I disliked my Aunt Clarissa—who was my father’s sister—as much as she disliked me. She was constantly comparing me with her three daughters—Sylvia, Phyllis and Clarissa—who were all golden-haired, blue-eyed and, according to her, beautiful. She was going to be very busy bringing them out, and I was to join them in this fearsome necessity for all young ladies. I knew I was going to hate it as much as Aunt Clarissa dreaded it.

So the fact that Aunt Clarissa was in the house was an additional reason why I wanted to be out of it.

I had wandered about the house miserably all day, and on the stairs I met my Aunt Clarissa. “My goodness me, Harriet” she cried. “Look at your hair! You always look as if you’ve been pulled through a bush backwards. Your cousins don’t have trouble with their hair. They would never go about looking as you do, I can assure you.”

“Oh, they are the three graces.”

“Don’t be insolent, Harriet. I should have thought that you might have taken special pains with your hair, seeing that…”

“Seeing that I’m deformed?”

She was shocked. “What nonsense. Of course, you’re not But I should have thought you might …”

I went limping upstairs into my room. She mustn’t know how deeply I cared. None of them must, for then it would be quite unbearable.

In my room I stood before the mirror; I lifted my long gray merino skirt and I looked at my legs and feet. There was nothing to show that one leg was shorter than the other; it was only when I walked that I appeared to drag one behind the other. It had always been like that, from the disappointing day I was born. Disappointing! That was a mild way of expressing it It was a hateful day, a tragic day for everyone, including myself. I knew nothing about it until later, when I began to discover that I was not quite like other children. As if it was not bad enough to be the cause of your mother’s death, you had to be made imperfectly as well. I remember hearing it said of some great beauty—Lady Hamilton, I think—that God was in a glorious mood when he made her. “Well,” I retorted, “He must have been in a bad temper when He made me!”

Sometimes I wished that I had been born anyone but Harriet Delvaney. When Fanny took me into the park and I saw other children, I always envied them. I envied almost everybody—even the dirty children of the man with the barrel organ, who used to stand beside him looking pitiful while the little brown monkey held out the red cap for pennies. Everybody, I thought in those days, was more fortunate than Harriet Delvaney.

I had been told by several nannies under whom Fanny had served that I was a bad, wicked girl. I had a good home, plenty to eat a kind father, a good nanny, and I was not satisfied.

I did not walk until I was four years old. I was taken to doctors who meddled with my legs and had long discussions about what was to be done and shook their heads over me. I was given this treatment and that; my father used to come and look at me, and there was something in his eyes which told me he would rather look at anything than at me, but he forced himself to pretend he liked doing it.

I remember one day when I was hi the garden of my Aunt Clarissa’s house near Regent’s Park. It was strawberry time, and we had been eating the fruit with sugar and cream near the summerhouse. All the women had parasols and big shady hats to protect their complexions, and because it was Phyllis’s birthday there were several children on the lawn and they were running about playing together. I was seated on my chair with my offending, hateful legs stretched out before me. I had come in the carriage and been carried into the garden by one of the footmen and placed hi the chair where I might watch the other children.

I heard Aunt Clarissa’s voice: “Not a very pleasant child. I suppose one must make excuses …”

I did not understand what she meant, although I stored up the remark to ponder on later; when I think of that day I remember the scent of strawberries; the delicious mingling of fruit, sugar and cream, and legs … the strong legs of other children.

I can still recall the great determination which came to me as I almost fell out of the chair and stood on my own legs and walked.

It was a miracle, said the kind ones. Others thought I could have done it before and had been pretending all the time. The doctors were astonished.

I could only totter at first; but from that day I walked. I do not know whether I could have walked before or not; all I can remember is that sudden sense of determination and of gratifying power as I tottered toward those children.

I gradually learned my pathetic little story, mostly from the servants who had worked hi the house before my birth.

“She was too old to have children. Could you wonder … Having Miss Harriet killed her. Operation … Them instruments … Well, it’s dangerous. Lost her and saved the child. But there’s her with that leg. As for him … he was never the same again. Idolized her … Of course, they’d only been married a year or two. Whether it ‘ud have lasted, him being what he is … No wonder he can’t abide the child, though. Now, if she’d been like Miss Phyllis or one of her cousins … Makes you think, don’t it? Money ain’t everything.”

There was my story in those few words. Sometimes I imagined that I was” a saint who went about the world doing good and everyone loved me. They said: “Well, she’s no beauty, but one must make excuses and she’s very good.”

But I wasn’t good. I was jealous of my cousins with their pretty pink faces and their silky, golden hair; I was angry with my father who couldn’t abide me because my coming into the world sent my mother out of it. I was difficult with the servants because I was sorry for myself.

The only people with whom I felt I could be humble and perhaps learn to be good were the Menfreys; it was not that they took much notice of me, but to me they were the Magic Menfreys, living in the most exciting house I had ever seen, perched on the cliffs opposite No Man’s Island, which belonged to them and about which there was a story I had yet to discover. Our house was the nearest to theirs—much more modern—a mansion in which my father could entertain and look after the constituency. The Menfreys were his great friends. “They must be cultivated,” I had heard him say to his secretary William Lister. “They carry great influence in the constituency.” So the Menfreys were to be tended like, flowers in the greenhouse.

And it was only necessary to look at them—all of them— to believe in their influence. William Lister had said that they were larger than life. It was the first time I had heard the phrase, and it fitted well.

The family were very ready to be friendly with us; they worked for father during the elections; they entertained him, and he entertained them. They were the lords of the district, and when Sir Endelion told his tenants to vote, they voted and for the candidate he favored; if not, they need not expect to remain his tenants.

When we went to Cornwall some of the servants accompanied us, while Mrs. Trant and Polden stayed in London with a skeleton staff; Miss James, Nanny and Fanny, among others, came with us; and in Cornwall we had a resident butler and housekeeper—husband and wife, the A’Lees — who went with the furnished house we rented, which was very convenient.

I was allowed to go to tea at Menfreya, and Gwennan came to have tea with me at Chough Towers. She would ride over with one of the grooms from Menfreya, and it was during one of these visits that I learned to ride and discovered that I was happier in the saddle than anywhere else because then my defect was unimportant; I felt normal on horseback. The nearest I had ever been to complete pleasure was riding along those Cornish lanes, uphill, downhill, and I never grew in the least blase in my appreciation of the scenery. I always caught my breath in wonder when, reaching the top of a steep hill, I had a sudden glimpse of the sea.

I envied Gwennan for living permanently in such a place. She liked to hear about London, and I enjoyed telling her. In return I made her talk about Menfreya and the Menfreys, but most of all about Bevil.