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perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who is
my usual helper in these times of parturition, I must spur her up
at all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify my unformed
fancies.
And while I was groping for the fable and the character required,
behold I found them lying ready and nine years old in my memory.
Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot,
nine years old. Was there ever a more complete justification of
the rule of Horace? Here, thinking of quite other things, I had
stumbled on the solution, or perhaps I should rather say (in
stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a story
conceived long before on the moors between Pitlochry and
Strathardle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell
of heather and bog-plants, and with a mind full of the Athole
correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide Justice. So long
ago, so far away it was, that I had first evoked the faces and the
mutual tragic situation of the men of Durrisdeer.
My story was now world-wide enough: Scotland, India, and America
being all obligatory scenes. But of these India was strange to me
except in books; I had never known any living Indian save a Parsee,
a member of my club in London, equally civilised, and (to all
seeing) equally accidental with myself. It was plain, thus far,
that I should have to get into India and out of it again upon a
foot of fairy lightness; and I believe this first suggested to me
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