Memoirs of a Midget

"[...] My mother, in her youth at Tunbridge Wells, had been considered "a beauty," and had had many admirers-at least so Mrs Ballard, our cook, told Pollie: "Yes, and we know who might have turned out different if things hadn't been the same," was a cryptic remark she once made which filled two "little pitchers" to overflowing. Among these admirers was a Mr Wagginhorne who now lived at Maidstone. He had pocketed his passion but not his admiration; and being an artist in the same sense that my father was an author, he had painted my mother and me and a pot of azaleas in oils. How well I remember those interminable sittings, with the old gentleman daubing along, and cracking his beloved jokes and Kentish cobbs at one and the same time. Whenever he came to see us this portrait was taken out of a cupboard and hung up in substitution for another picture in the dining-room. What became of it when Mr Wagginhorne died I could never discover. My mother would laugh when I inquired, and archly eye my father. It was clear, at any rate, that author was not jealous of artist! My mother was gentle with me, and had need to be; and I was happier in her company than one might think possible in a world of such[...]".