I would not wear his distinctive hat or carry his pipe, but I relished with childish delight playing the role of Sherlock Holmes. It had not been so long ago that playing, pretending, was something I did all the time; the freedom of childhood is hard to relinquish. I confess I was more than a little smugly pleased to do something my mother would absolutely detest. Doing so had become as important to me as `fitting in' was to her. We were equally misguided and wholly oblivious to it.
As I was not yet old enough to wear a corset, I was allowed to dress myself for I had not yet been assigned my own maid. My governess, nearly obsolete in my maturing eyes, supervised my choice of morning dress when I called for her, helped with the long line of buttons down the back, checked my stockings and m
