To tell the truth, I was not feeling in my best form.  Just before entering the tramcar I had a brief dispute with my mother in regard to the contents of a fruit-shop at the beginning of Gray’s Inn Road.  There are many subjects on which the two of us fail to see eye to eye, and frequently a somewhat acrimonious debate ends in triumph on her side.  At times, we get along admirably together; at others a recommendation from her that I should not exhibit temper goads me into something like fury.  The storm over, I am sorry that it happened.  My mother has often remarked that I can be a perfect lady when I like.

“Not a one to nurse a grievance,” she adds.  “A couple of minutes and it’s all past and forgotten.”

Our entry into the car was scarcely auspicious, partly because the question of cherries had not vanished from my thoughts, p. 124partly because I wanted to go up the steps and my mother was resolved to go inside; the conductor spoke sharply, and my mother resented his tones.  He expressed satisfaction in the knowledge that all passengers did not closely resemble us, and my mother retorted that if there were many conductors of his style people would prefer to walk.  He said he supposed that she, being a woman, would insist on having the final word, and my mother suggested it must give him a nasty shock to find himself correct for the first time in his life; she added something about his features which struck me as being not in quite the best taste.  I tugged at her arm.

“You be quiet!” she said to me sharply.  “Perfect worry, that’s what you are.  Catch me ever letting you come out again to look at the shops!”

The car started from Holborn on its twopenny journey to Stamford Hill in these circumstances.  The conductor, in collecting fares, scowled at me, and I frowned back at him; before going up the steps he looked in again to say ironically that we were a pretty pair.  A young man with his sweetheart seated next to us thought the remark was addressed to him, and there ensued a fresh wrangle, at the end of which the youth took the conductor’s number, and half the passengers said the conductor had not gone p. 125outside the bounds of common civility; the other half referred to him as a Jack-in-office.  The young woman spoke to me and made some complimentary allusion to my looks and general appearance.

“Keep still!” ordered my mother.  “I won’t have you talking to Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

I knew that argument was useless; it would have been a waste of time to point out that these names could not be rightly applied to my new friend.  She, an amiable person, showed me the Holborn Town Hall, and remarked that she sometimes went to concerts there; the reference must have suggested something to me, for, despite my mother’s efforts to restrain, I lifted up my voice and sang.  It was but a simple melody, but the earnestness I put into it seemed to touch the hearts of other passengers, and when I finished they had ceased the dispute regarding the conductor and were nodding to me pleasantly.

“Less noise inside there!” commanded the conductor, returned from upstairs.

“Let her sing if she wants to,” said a matronly woman near the door.

“I’m not a-going to have this tramcar turned into a Queen’s Hall,” he declared, “and you ought to know yourself better than encourage her.”

“I was young myself once.”

p. 126“That wasn’t yesterday,” he suggested.

The song had received so much favour that I considered the wisdom of giving them either another or diversifying the entertainment by offering some of my celebrated imitations.  These have always been highly successful at home and at the houses of relatives; an uncle of mine remarked on one occasion that they were far and away superior to the originals.  I had not, however, previously attempted them before an audience of strangers, and............