Long ago in Scotland a little girl grew up in an industrial town. Her father owned a linoleum factory. His family lived in a fine big house with a walled garden all around. Flowers in the front, vegetables and fruit trees in the back. The girl was shy and quiet. She played on her swing in the garden and followed the gardener around in the summer. In winter she stayed indoors and helped her mother and the maid with the house work. She never left the garden to venture into the harsh, drab city outside.
When she had to go to school she was afraid. Her father did not believe in an expensive education for his children. ``What was good enough for me is good enough for them,'' he said, so she went to the local school.
The other children were rough and wild and she shrunk away from them.
Her hair was long, it reached her waist, and it was thick and black and straight. She wore it parted down the middle and tied back with a black ribbon.
When things got too bad at school she would pull off the ribbon and shake her hair over her face in a thick curtain. When her hair was over her face she did not respond. She stayed silent behind her hair and for some reason no one dared touch her.
When her father heard of her behavior he had her hair pulled into two tight braids when she went to school. Now she had no defence.
She would sit paralyzed with fear at the battered wooden desk with the carved initials and ink stains all over it. When a teacher addressed her she often did not understand what they asked because her mind was frozen with fear.
One day she was sharpening a pencil in arithmetic class when the teacher made her stand up so he could test her mental arithmetic.
``Stop sharpening that pencil!'' the teacher ordered.
At first the problems were easy and she had no difficulty answering, but 67+244 was just too hard. Unconsciously her hands turned the pencil in the sharpener.
``I said stop sharpening that pencil! Put it down!''
She just stood there, still turning the pencil in the sharpener. Petrified.
The teacher threw her out of class for the rest of the term. She had to stand in the hall. The other kids thought she was a hero. She dared to disobey. She made a few friends. Gordon, who was one of only three boys wearing a kilt to school and had his own problems, became her champion. He was a tough one and that was good.
The bad part was that she never caught up in arithmetic. Mathematics were closed to her for the rest of her school days. Although she was accepted by the University she could graduate only with a diploma, not a Bachelor's degree because of her lack of math. Not that it really mattered. Except to her.