"You're a strange girl!" muttered my mother, shaking her head.
"Yes, I know, mother. Well, I can't help it."
I've given up arguing with her. She's too old, and frankly, so am I. Once, not long ago, I asked her if she knew "The Lady Who Loved Insects." She didn't, of course. It's a 12th-century tale, little read except by antiquarians like me. The lady in question is also "strange" — in refusing to blacken her teeth, for instance, or to pluck her eyebrows bald, as women did then as a matter of course. I showed my mother an illustration I happened to have of a typical woman of the day — blackened teeth, plucked eyebrows and all; a rather grotesque little figure — and demanded, "So? Who's strange?"