I know many people think of Hayley as a fine actress and a big star--and she's all that--but I just don't think of her that way. I always think of her as my little sister, with whom I grew up. Not that I'm really any taller than she, but I'm four years older.

Hayley and I have always been very close. Until I got married, we shared the same room--both at the Wick, where we lived when we were very small, and at the farm in Sussex. (Now the family's living at the Wick again.) I often think of the days when Hayley and I were growing up; and though my present life is very full; with my husband, Russell Alquist, and our wonderful year-old son, Sean, and my career on stage and in pictures, great waves of homesickness come over me. I knew when I got married, four years ago, that I'd miss Hayley terribly, but I didn't realize how much I'd miss her giggles and her laughter, and the long chats we used to have together. We write each other all the time and talk to each other long distance, but it's not quite the some thing, of course.

Hayley and I never had any secrets from each other, and we still don't.

I remember when I first met my future husband; it was in Central Park, my favorite place in New York. I used to go horseback riding there often, and sometimes I'd sit in the Park, studying the trees and watching the friendly squirrels. I was 17 then, and was going through the excitement of appearing in a Broadway play, Five Finger Exercise.

Like any teen-ager; I liked dating and boys; but just as Hayley today says confidently that she won't marry till she's 25 or 26--lately she's even said 28--I always said I wouldn't marry till I was 25. I was quite positive when I said it. Then a mutual friend introduced me to Russell in Central Park, of all places. Well, I guess it was a good omen--that I should meet him in my favorite spot in New York. He is tall and fair and looks Scandinavian--which he is. I thought he was quite a dish.

Hayley was in Hollywood at the time, and I wrote her about the smashing boy I'd met. I don't think I fell in love at first sight, but it didn't take too long after that for me to know that I cared--and Russell cared, too.

About four months later, when I went out to Hollywood, Hayley and I had long talks about it. She was delighted when I told her that I thought I was falling in love. Her attitude was very romantic. Her eyes sparkled. She said "goody goody" when I told her all about Russell. She didn't know then that we were going to get married. I didn't know it either. But it didn't take long for Russell and me to realize we did want to get married. When I told my parents, they were upset about it; they felt I was much too young to think of marriage. I had to admit that they were right; I was young. They wanted us to wait--and we did. When we decided to get married 18 months later, Hayley's feelings were mixed. We'd all had such a happy home life, I think it was hard for her to understand how I could possibly want to leave home. Once when the 17-year-old daughter of a friend was going to get married, she said, "I don't see how she can do it. I couldn't bear to leave home like that." But Hayley knew, from what I had said, that getting married to Russell would make me happy--and she wanted me to be happy. She knew I had to be very deeply in love to want to leave my family. She caught some of the contagion of my excitement, but she was a little sad, too, for with her deep sensitivity she knew how much we would miss each other.

Russell and I were married in a little church in Sussex, not far from the family farm. Hayley was my only bridesmaid. She wore a pale coral dress and a coronet of feathers and flowers in her hair. She looked lovely. And wonder of wonders--Hayley did everything that a bridesmaid is supposed to do, without making a single mistake. I say "wonder of wonders"--trite though the phrase is--because to tell the truth, my little sister is the most absent-minded person I have ever known.

She is a darling, and I adore her--but was there ever anyone as forgetful as Hayley! You can make an appointment with her and remind her about it, and she will faithfully mean to keep it--then she will forget all about it. She is forever losing her keys. If she lived by herself, I am sure she would lock herself out of her own apartment 15 times a week.

Well, thank goodness, everything went off smoothly at our wedding. It was quite an occasion. We held our wedding reception in the cow shed of the family farm, and as Hayley later said, "We moved 250 cows out and 250 friends in, and the whole village turned out to cheer."

Hayley glowed that evening, mirroring my excitement and happiness. But later on that night, that little imp was a little bit sad, knowing that an end had come to the childhood we had shared together. After all, I was almost 19, but she was only 15, and it must have been hard for her to understand what adult love is like--even though we had a shining example of it in our own father and mother.

Possibly Hayley even cried a little that night; Hayley and I are often up in the clouds one moment and sad the next. And Mummy, Hayley, Jonathan--our younger brother--and I all cry very easily, and laugh easily, too, and sometimes go quickly from laughter to tears, or vice versa.

People sometimes ask me if we ever quarrel. We are ordinary, normal sisters. Of course we quarrel. We would be extraordinary freaks if we didn't. But we've never had a row so terrible that we wouldn't talk to each other afterwards. The arguments have been about trivial subjects.

But our quarrels were just a normal part of growing up. I've heard about families in which parents made a great to-do about their children reconciling. If our parents had been like that and had insisted on our making up with a big ceremony, and a lot of kisses, I doubt our relationship would as good as it is today. There was never anything sticky or sentimental about our reconciliations.

We're not stickily sentimental, but we have deep down sentiment. How I miss Hayley now that I'm not at the family home. My mind keeps going back to the days when we were all together at the Wick--the big Georgian house on top of a hill where the family lives now--or all together on the farm. The memories fuse.

When I started my latest picture at Universal, The Rare Breed, a lot of the people in the company were worried because I had to play opposite a 1200-pound Hereford bull.

"You don't have to worry about that," I told them. "We had 250 head of cattle when my family lived on a farm in England. I delivered my first calf when I was 14."

It was true. I delivered that first calf by mistake, but Hayley and I were used to working around farm animals. We had all sorts of chores to do on the farm, including mowing grass and milking cows. I don't really remember whether Hayley did a good job of milking the cows or not; you'd have to ask the cows that. But years later, she did say that she was glad that machinery had finally been invented to milk cows.

The farm days are vivid in my mind. Because we are a close family, there's never been any formality among us. We were always barging in and out of each other's rooms.

As Hayley once said, "In some families going into the bedroom or when someone's just out of the bath, you have to knock at the door, and the person inside says, 'Just a minute,' and quickly gets dressed in a towel. That sets up a sort of barrier. But we were never conscious of such things."

Hayley and I bathed together--well, not at the same time, but I'd rush in as she was getting out, or she'd rush in as I was getting out. Hot water was scarce on the farm. There were five of us, you see, and the one who got started first had the hottest water.

It was fun having Hayley as a roommate. We were both untidy. (I was untidy before I got married; I'm much more tidy now.) Hayley was more untidy than I, for she had her walls covered with photographs of Elvis Presley, so her side of the room was much more cluttered than mine. I liked Elvis, too, but not enough to cover our walls with his photos.

To this day Hayley is a great movie fan. So am I. Whenever we used to go to premières together, we'd poke each other in the ribs when we saw someone familiar, and we'd ask, "Who's that? Who's that?"

Of course, Hayley herself is famous, but she never seems to think about that.

Some people seem to have the impression that Hayley never goes out on dates by herself, always with Mummy or Daddy. Well, that was true once, but it would be ridiculous now that she's 19. She wrote me recently that she was so excited. Mummy and Daddy bought her a Mini-Minor car for her birthday; she had passed her driving test in England, just as she did in the United States. She loves cars--old and new--and has been getting a thrill out of doing her own driving, though she did get a ticket once in Hollywood when she made the mistake of turning on the fog lights at night instead of the headlights.

I can't get used to the idea of Hayley being so grown up. I keep thinking of the fun and pranks we shared as children. When I was about nine years old, we went shopping with Mummy one day in a big department store in London. We had taken our two white mice, Nosy and Parker, along for company. We were so proud of them we took them out to show to people in the store. When we saw how scared some of the women were, we just couldn't resist dropping the two white mice to the floor. Just like in the song about three blind mice, see how they run--they ran, oh, how they ran. Hayley and I grew round- and merry-eyed as we watched women run to the top of the stairs or jump on counters, all because they were afraid of those tiny mice. Then we chased after them--the mice I mean, not the women. We eventually caught them, but first we almost caused a riot among those bargain-hunting women. Mummy hadn't known we were going to release the mice or she would have stopped us. But she didn't spank us. She has too good a sense of humor.

There were other pranks Hayley and I used to play in school. I went to the Elmherst Ballet School when I was nine; four years later Hayley followed me there. She was in the junior house; I was in the senior house. One night someone dared me to leave our dormitory, stay the night in Hayley's and slip back into ours without being detected. I sneaked out to Hayley's place, and she welcomed me. We were spending the night together, talking and giggling quietly, when one of the girls in the dormitory got sick. She wanted to call the mistress of the school. I said, "Oh, don't do that. I've got special pills I carry around for sickness. I'll give you some of those."

I gave her a couple of cough drops; they were my "special pills" and fortunately they seemed to work.

None of these pranks, however, ever got us into trouble. Mummy and Daddy were rarely angry at us; there was just one thing that used to make Daddy lose his temper.

Whenever Hayley and I were at home, we used to chatter so much it made it hard for our parents to sleep. We would talk, talk, talk. It made no difference if lights were out, Hayley and I would keep on talking. Mummy and Daddy had the bedroom above us. Daddy had a big walking stick he used to bang on the floor. We knew what that meant. For a while we would whisper, then we would forget and start talking loudly again. If this went on long enough, Daddy would come down and order us to stop.

Hayley and I are different in many ways. She's Iess independent than I and easier to get along with. If Hayley has an argument with somebody, she may give in for the sake of peace. For instance, we'll sometimes have a discussion in the family with Mummy. Suppose Mummy makes her point and I make mine. If I think I'm right, I'll go on arguing and arguing. Hayley will give in rather than continue the argument. She will say, "Well, I'm not really sure I'm right; you may be right."

Hayley accepts direction from our parents more easily than I ever did. She always has. Am I painting myself as a real black sheep? Suppose we were told not to go someplace we wanted to go to--say, a party or a movie. Hayley'd accept that more gracefully than I. I'd pout for an hour or so.

But Hayley is growing more independent now. When she was getting ready to make That Darn Cat, she came to Beverly Hills a few weeks before Mother did, and spent those weeks on her own.

I don't think Hayley has ever been in love. She has never gone steady with any one boy. But I'm sure when she falls in love, she will fall all the way, just as I did.

I'm sure Hayley will make a wonderful wife and mother. I'll always remember when the family was together in New York. At six o'clock one morning, my mother heard laughter coming from Sean's room. She walked into the nursery, and there was Hayley sitting with Sean, telling him funny stories as she bounced him on her knee. He was only six months old; it was obvious he couldn't understand a word she was saying, but he could understand the tone of her voice--full of humor and love.

--BY JULIET MILLS AS TOLD TO DORA ALBERT