ideal mother for a son of such
Bohemian tendencies as Robert Louis.

Even that marvellous taste in dress which her son affected, and which
would certainly have dismayed more conventional mothers, only amused her
immensely. Among other jottings of hers about him in her little
note-book is one which relates with much appreciation that a faithful
servant says of him, 'One summer he tried to wear a frock-coat and tall
hat, but after a little he laid them aside and said, "I am not going to
be a swell any more," and returned to the velveteen coat and the straw
hat which he preferred.'

Except at a wedding, or some such solemn function, whereat he probably
looked misery personified, one cannot remember him so conventionally
apparelled as in the frock-coat and the tall hat. Possibly it was before
this access of propriety temporarily had him in its grasp that one day
we saw him in Princes Street 'taking the air' in an open cab with a
Stevenson cousin, attired in like manner with himself. In those days
fashionable people often walked in Princes Street in the afternoon, so
what was our dismay, in the midst of quite a crowd of the gay world, to
see that open cab, at a word of command from Robert Louis, draw near the
pavement as we approached, when two battered straw hats were lifted to
us with quite a Parisian grace. Both young men wore sailor hats with
brilliant ribbon bands, both were attired in flannel cricketing jackets
with broad bright stripes, and round Louis's neck was knotted a huge
yellow silk handkerchief, while over both their heads one of them held
an open umbrella. In days when the wearing of cricketing clothes, except
in the playing fields, was in Scotland still so uncommon that it is on
authentic record that an elderly unmarried lady in an east coast
watering place, on meeting in its high street a young man in boating
flannels, was so shocked at the innovation that she promptly went home,
leaving all her shopping undone and her tea-drinking and friendly gossip
forgotten, such an apparition as that in the open cab required more
courage to face than people accustomed to the present-day use of gay
tennis garb can easily imagine. It was fortunate that nerve to return
the salutation smilingly was not wanting, or Mr Stevenson would
certainly have pitilessly chaffed the timid victims of conventionality
afterwards.

Having borne the ordeal with such courage as we possessed, we hastened
to have tea with Mrs Stevenson, who