Lady Victoria Campbell

OF THE WILD TIREE " 185
quite as much as it did me ; anyway, she always put
on whatever I chose, and we used to spend immense
pains in finding things that matched each other
and went well with her gown. Then, as we turned
over the things in the box, she used to tell me about
their owners and their givers. The big, early Vic-
torian lockets, which had hair inside them, or mono-
grams twisted on their vast expanses, were
foundations for family histories, which she made
extraordinarily alive and interesting to a child's
mind. We used to go into shouts of laughter together
over all sorts of things. She laughed gloriously —
helplessly and infectiously.
All this was quite in my early days, before I was
twelve. It was later on that Frank and I went to
stay with her in Tiree. Though I was only there once,
and that in August, which was not her busy time
in the islands, with no programme of daily work of
meetings and classes like her winters had, still, it
happened that I had a chance of seeing something of
what her life there was. When one had seen it,
very little imagination was needed to realise what
it might have been for any person who had less
driving force within them.
But she delighted so much in adventure that the
shortcomings and difficulties of life were always full
of possibilities. Her spirit rose to meet them, like
a cork upon the waves. We travelled with her,
at the end of our visit, all of us going together to
Jura, where Uncle George had a house that year.
No boat goes naturally from Tiree direct to any