Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.

Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time.

It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.

But at the very moment she was thinking these thoughts, adventure, as she afterwards told my Mother, was stalking her.

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Her interest in these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in her mind as if they were characters in a book or a play.

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds

She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

All her life, dreams had been her friends. Her dreams were unusually detailed, well-structured, colorful.

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

Sometimes Matilda longed for a friend, someone like the kind, courageous people in her books.

Her words are trusty heralds to her mind.

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

Sixo