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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Professional Aunt, by Mary C.E. Wemyss
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Professional Aunt
+
+Author: Mary C.E. Wemyss
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5736]
+Posting Date: April 23, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROFESSIONAL AUNT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sean Pobuda
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSIONAL AUNT
+
+By Mary C. E. Wemyss
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+A boy's profession is not infrequently chosen for him by his
+parents, which perhaps accounts for the curious fact that the shrewd,
+business-like member of a family often becomes a painter, while the
+artistic, unpractical one becomes a member of the Stock Exchange, in
+course of time, naturally.
+
+My profession was forced upon me, to begin with, by my sisters-in-law,
+and in the subsequent and natural order of things by their children--my
+nephews and nieces.
+
+Zerlina says it is the duty of one woman in every family to be an aunt.
+By that she means of course a professional aunt. She says she does not
+understand the longing on the part of unattached females--the expression
+is hers, not mine--for a larger sphere of usefulness than that which
+aunt hood offers. She considers that it affords full scope for the
+energies of any reasonably constituted woman; and no doubt, if the
+professional aunt was all that Zerlina says she should be, she would
+have her time fully occupied in the discharging of her duties.
+
+Zerlina cannot see that it is not exactly a position of a woman's own
+choosing, although under strong pressure she has been known to admit
+that there have been cases in which women have been made aunts whether
+they would or no; and she thinks it is perhaps by way of protest against
+such usage that they so shamefully neglect their duties in that walk
+of life to which their bothers and sister-in-law have seen fit to call
+them.
+
+Of course, when an aunt marries, she loses at once all the perfecting
+of the properly constituted aunt; and that is a thing to be seriously
+considered. Is she wise in leaving a profession for which all her
+sisters-in-law think she is admirably fitted, for one which the most
+experienced pronounce a lottery?
+
+This is all of course written from Zerlina's point of view. She requires
+of a professional aunt many things. She must, to begin with, remember
+the birthdays of all her nephews and nieces, of Zerlina's children
+in particular. If she remembers their birthdays, it stand to reason,
+Zerlina's reason, that the sequence of thought is--presents.
+
+The really successful aunt knows the particular taste of each nephew and
+niece. She knows, moreover, the exact moment at which the taste changes
+from a love for woolly rabbits to a passion for steam engines. Instinct
+tells her at what age a child maybe promoted, with safety, from wool to
+paint, and she knows the critical moment in a boy's life when a Bible
+should be bestowed. It usually, or perhaps I should say my experience is
+that it usually, follows the first knife, an ordinary two-bladed knife,
+and comes the birthday before a knife--"with things in it." The real
+boy must have a knife with things in it: a corkscrew,--I wonder why a
+corkscrew?--a buttonhook, a thing to take stones out of horses' hoofs,
+a thing to mend traces with--I know I am ignorant of the technical
+terms--but the hardest-hearted shop-assistant will never fail to help a
+professional aunt in the choice of a knife, unless by chance he should
+be unhappy enough never to have been a boy, and such cases are rare.
+
+I used often to wonder why boys wanted all these things. Now I know,
+because I asked Dick and he said, "You see, Aunt Woggles, I use them for
+other things." I am not sure that most of us don't do the same thing
+with many of our most cherished possessions in life.
+
+As regards steam-engines Zerlina lays down a distinct law. They must
+never burst--that is an injury no sister-in-law would ever forgive--and
+paint must never come off. If Zerlina had known and loved the taste of
+crimson lake in the days of her youth, she would never draw so hard and
+fast a line.
+
+From the earliest moment in a baby's career, the professional aunt takes
+upon herself serious responsibilities. She may not, for instance, like
+any ordinary aunt, pass the baby in his perambulator, out walking. Any
+other aunt may, with perfect propriety, say, "Hullo, duckie, where's
+auntie?" and pass on. She knows the danger of stopping, and seeks to
+avoid it. Not so the professional aunt. She realizes the danger and
+faces it. She knows she will have to wait, for the sake of the child's
+character, until he shall choose to say, "Ta-ta."
+
+He will probably, if he is a healthy child, say everything he knows
+but that. He will go through his limited vocabulary in a pathetically
+obliging manner, making the most beautiful "moo-moos" and
+"quack-quacks," but he will not say, "Ta-ta." Why should he? On
+persuasion, and more especially if the interview should take place at
+a street-corner on a windy March day, he will repeat the "moo-moos" and
+"quack-quacks" even more successfully than before, and he will wonder
+in what way they fall short of perfection, since he earns no praise. He
+likes to be rewarded with, "Kevver boy." We all do, just as a matter of
+form, if nothing else. Surely ordinary politeness demands it.
+
+He will not say, "Ta-ta," though. Who knows but what it is innate
+politeness on his part and his way of saying, "Oh, don't go! What a
+flying visit!"
+
+However, the professional aunt cannot be sure of this, although she can
+guess; so she must wait patiently, for the sake of Baby's morals and
+nurse's feelings, until he does say, "Ta-ta." We may suppose that he
+at last loses his temper and says it, meaning, no doubt, "For goodness
+sake, go!" if not something stronger. The nurse is satisfied, the aunt
+is released, and the conscientious objector is wheeled away.
+
+Besides ministering to the soul of a baby the aunt must tend to its
+bodily needs, and for this reason she must be a good needlewoman.
+
+Before the arrival of the first nephew or niece, when she is very
+unprofessional, she will hastily put her work under the sofa or behind
+the cushion when any one comes into the room. As she grows older and
+more professional, and the nephews and nieces become more numerous, she
+will give up hiding her work. People who are intimately connected with
+the family will show no surprise, and to inquisitive strangers, unless
+she is very religious, she can murmur something about a creche, so long,
+of course, as Zerlina is not there.
+
+The really successful aunt, one who is at the top of her profession,
+can perfectly well be trusted to take all the children to the Zoo alone;
+that is to say, without a nurse, and of course without the mother. The
+mother knows how pleased and gratified an aunt feels on being given the
+entire charge of the children. The nurse is gratified too; in fact
+every one is pleased, with perhaps the exception of the aunt. But it is
+against professional etiquette for her to say so. She only wonders why
+mothers think a privilege they hold so lightly--taking the children
+to the Zoo--should be so esteemed by other women. But as the old
+story goes, "Hush, darling, hush, the doctor knows best," so must we
+say,--"Mothers know best."
+
+Another qualification in a professional aunt, desirable if not
+indispensable, is tact. If she should be possessed of ever so little, it
+will save her a considerable amount of bother. She won't, in a moment of
+mental aberration, praise dark-eyed children to Zerlina, whose children
+have blue eyes. Should she do so, by some unlucky chance, it would take
+several expeditions to the Zoo, and probably one to Kew, before things
+were as they were. If Zerlina, however, should, by the expedition of
+the aunt and children to Kew, be enabled to do something she very much
+wanted to do, and couldn't, because the nurse's father was ill, and the
+nursery-maid anemic, the little misunderstanding will have disappeared
+by the time the aunt returns from Kew, and Zerlina will say, after
+carefully counting the children,--it is this mathematical tendency
+in mothers that hurts an aunt,--"I do trust you implicitly with the
+children, dear. You know that; it isn't every one I could trust; you are
+so capable! I wish I were, but one can't be everything. Of course you
+don't understand a mother's feelings."
+
+I sometimes wonder why Zerlina always says this to me. I have never
+pretended to be anything but an aunt.
+
+But to return to my profession. As the children grow older the duties of
+the aunt become more arduous. For the benefit of schoolboy nephews with
+exeats, she must have an intimate acquaintance with the Hippodrome, any
+exhibition going, every place of instruction, of a kind, or amusement.
+She must be thoroughly up in matinees, and know what plays are
+frightfully exciting, and she must have a nice taste in sweets. She need
+not necessarily eat them; it is perhaps better if she does not. But she
+must know where the very best are to be procured. She must never get
+tired. She must love driving in hansoms and going on the top of 'buses.
+She must know where the white ones go, and where the red ones don't,
+although a mistake on her part is readily forgiven, if it prolongs the
+drive without curtailing a performance of any kind. This requires great
+experience. She must set aside, moreover, a goodly sum every year for
+professional expenses.
+
+The foregoing are a few of the qualifications which Zerlina thinks
+essential in aunts. There are others, and the greatest of them is love.
+Zerlina forgot to mention that.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+But Diana! That is another story. Open the windows wide, let in the
+fresh air, the whispering of trees, the song of the birds, and all that
+is good and beautiful in nature. The very thought of Diana is sunshine.
+She is as God meant us to be, happy and good, believing in the goodness
+of others, slow to find evil in them, quick to forgive it, infinitely
+pitiful of the sorrows of the suffering. This is Diana, and she has
+three children, Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Allah be praised!
+
+You do not imagine that I dislike Zerlina, do you? I should be sorry to
+give that impression. But a professional aunt must be above all things
+absolutely straightforward and truthful.
+
+I had been engaged for weeks to go to Hames for the first shoot, and an
+urgent telegram from Zerlina, followed by a feverish letter, failed to
+move me from my purpose. The telegram, by the way, ran as follows: "Can
+you Tuesday for fortnight. Do. Urgent. ZERLINA." I wondered why Zerlina
+elected to leave out "come." If I had been strictly economizing, I
+should have saved on the "do." The letter followed in due course of
+time:--
+
+Dear Betty, I have just sent a wire in frantic haste asking you to come
+[that was exactly what she had not done] on Tuesday for a fortnight.
+I should so much like you to see something of the children, and Baby
+really is very fascinating. She is such a fat child, much fatter than
+Muriel's baby, who is six months older. The fact is, Jim is rather run
+down; nothing much, of course, but I think a change would do him good,
+and the Staveleys have asked us to go to them, and I don't like to
+refuse, and we thought it would be such a good opportunity to have my
+bedroom re-papered and painted. I don't believe you would smell the
+paint, and in any case I believe there is some new kind of paint which
+smells delicious, like stephanotis, I am told, so I will order that. I
+would not ask you to come just as we are going away, because I should
+like to be at home to see you, but I could go away so happily if you
+were with the children; I often think for a woman without children,
+you are so wonderfully understanding, about children, I mean. You could
+manage nurse, too, I am sure. She is in one of her moods just now, and I
+feel I must get away from all worries for a little.
+
+Yours,
+
+ZERLINA
+
+P. S.--Jim is so well, and would send his love if he were here.
+
+I telegraphed back, of course, directly I got Zerlina's telegram,
+saying I could not come, and answered the letter at leisure. It is as
+a sister-in-law in relation to the aunt that Diana particularly shines.
+This aunt she looks upon as something more than useful, and asks her
+to stay at other times than when the children have measles, and
+whooping-cough, or the bedroom is to be re-papered. Zerlina perhaps is
+unfortunate. She says, "Have you ever noticed how the children always
+have something when you come to stay?" Zerlina is quite pretty when she
+puts her head on one side. I answer, "Yes, Zerlina, I have noticed it
+curiously enough," but I do not say that I suspect that at the very
+first sound of a cough, at the very first appearance of a rash, this
+aunt is urged to come and stay.
+
+Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty,
+Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But
+those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt
+wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional
+of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or
+other. A smile is enough.
+
+So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep
+down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Sara is of all babes in the
+world the most fascinating, say sisters-in-law other than Diana what
+they will. As a tribute to this fascination, the largest white rabbit,
+woolly to a degree undreamed of--at least I hoped so--in Sara's world,
+was carefully packed in my box, wrapped cunningly in tissue-paper, and
+guarded on all sides by clothing of a soft description. I have known a
+chiffon skirt put to strange uses in the interests of Sara.
+
+I found the carriage waiting for me, and was touched to see that Croft,
+the old coachman, had come to meet me himself. It is an honor he does
+the family with perhaps two or three exceptions. When he comes to meet
+me, there is a regular program to be gone through. It varies only in a
+very slight degree and begins like this:--
+
+I say, "Well, Croft, it is very nice to see you," and he says, "The same
+to you, miss, and many of them." He then begins to "riminize"; the word
+is his own. He begins with the auspicious day on which I was born, and
+describes how he himself went to fetch the doctor in the dead of the
+night. He describes minutely his costume and the part the elements
+played on the occasion; they were evidently very much upset. He then
+goes on to say how he held me on my first pony, and taught me to ride
+and drive. Having finally certificated me as competent to drive a pair
+of horses under any circumstances, I ask how the children are, Sara in
+particular. Here Croft looks heavenward, and says she looks a picture,
+and adds that she looks very like me. The footman knows that here the
+program is at an end, Croft having no greater praise to bestow on mortal
+woman, and he opens the carriage door and I get in.
+
+Diana knows what it is to travel t he distance of three miles in the
+suffocating embraces of Hugh and Betty; otherwise she would probably
+have sent the children to meet me.
+
+The smell of the brougham brought my childhood vividly back to me. I
+shut my eyes and instinctively put out my hand; and that hand that was
+always held out to us as children took mine in its loving clasp, and I
+was a child again, home from a visit, so glad to feel that hand again
+and to see that mother from whom it was agony to be parted, for even a
+short space of time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+When I arrived at Hames, Diana, tall, fair, and beautiful as a Diana
+should be, was on the doorstep to meet me. Diana, by the way, had been
+christened "Diana Elizabeth," in case she should have turned out short
+and dumpy and, by some miraculous chance, dark. I looked for Sara in the
+tail of Diana's gown,--I am afraid this is a literary license, as Diana
+does not wear tails to her gowns in the country as a rule,--but Sara was
+not there.
+
+"She is not there," said Diana. "The children are in the wildest state
+of excitement, and will you faithfully promise to go up and see them
+directly you have had tea?"
+
+I would willingly have gone then and there, and murmured something about
+my box, and Diana said she hoped I had not brought them anything.
+
+"Oh! nothing," I said; "only the smallest things possible"; knowing all
+the time that the woolly rabbit was, of its kind, unrivaled. But these
+are professional expenses, and what I spend does not afterwards give
+me a moment's worry. I have seen David, on the other hand, speechlessly
+miserable after buying a mezzotint, for the time being only, of course;
+the joy cometh in the morning, when Diana proves to him that it was the
+only thing to do, and that it was really quite wonderful, the way in
+which he was led to buy it. He had had no idea of doing so. Not the
+slightest! And yet something within him urged him to buy it. Absolutely
+urged him!
+
+Then, Diana said, it was clearly meant. If a man deliberately set out
+on a fine morning, bent on spending more than he could afford, then--!
+Diana's "then" is always so comforting.
+
+I am so afraid you will spoil the children, she said; "they expect
+presents, which is so dreadful. Hugh bet sixpence at lunch that you
+would bring him something, and he said to poor Mr. Hardy, You didn't."
+
+"But he will next time, Diana," I said.
+
+"Of course he will; that is the dreadful part of it."
+
+It is right that Diana should feel like that. A mother's point of view
+and another's, an aunt's, for instance, are totally different things,
+and I told Diana that, while fully appreciating her anxieties regarding
+the characters of her children, considered that to destroy a child's
+faith in an aunt was little short of criminal. But I promised that the
+next time I came I would, perhaps, not bring them anything. "But I shall
+give them fair warning."
+
+Diana admitted the justice of this, and she said, with a sigh of relief,
+"I can't bear the children to be disappointed; a disappointed Sara is--"
+
+"Diana," I interrupted, "is it wise to begin Saraing at this time of
+day?"
+
+In reality the woolly rabbit was tugging at my heartstrings and
+clamoring to be unpacked. After a hurried tea, which I was obliged to
+have for the sake of Bindon's feelings, I went upstairs, resolved to
+disinter at all costs, without delay, the rabbit. I felt great anxiety
+lest in transit the machinery which made the rabbit squeak in a way that
+surely no rabbit, mechanical or otherwise,--particularly the otherwise,
+I hoped,--had ever squeaked before, might be impaired; happily it was
+not.
+
+Having carefully shut the door and silenced the attendant housemaid, I
+took the precaution of burying the rabbit partially under the eider-down
+quilt before testing the squeak, so that no noise should reach the
+children. I am afraid I "mothered" the squeak of that rabbit if I
+imagined it could reach anywhere so far; it was in reality such a very
+small one. But such as it was, it was perfect, in spite of the deadening
+effect of the quilt, and I pictured Sara's dimples dimpling. How she
+would love it! The treasure was carefully wrapped up again, and I tried
+hard to make it look like anything rather than a rabbit, in case Sara
+should try, by feeling it, to discover its nature.
+
+Jane, the housemaid, said that no one could tell, no matter how much
+they tried; if they tried all day, they wouldn't, that she knew for
+sure; which was very consoling.
+
+I then examined Hugh's train and Betty's cooking-stove, and found them
+intact, with, the exception of a saucepan lid. This, after a search,
+we found under the wardrobe. Why do things always go under things? Jane
+didn't know--she only knew they did. Then I opened the door and called.
+
+Suddenly I heard a noise unearthly in its shrillness: it was Hugh
+calling his Aunt Woggles. He threw himself into my arms, keeping one
+eye, I could not help noticing, on the parcels. During the hug, which
+gave him plenty of time to make up his mind, he evidently decided
+which was for him; for he relaxed his hold and went to the table by the
+window, on which the parcels lay, whistling in as careless a manner as a
+boy bursting with excitement could do. First of all he stood on one leg,
+then on the other, and looked knowingly at me out of the corner of his
+eye. He was too honest to pretend that he thought the parcel was for
+some other boy, since there was no other. When the excitement became
+more than he could bear, he sang in a sing-song voice, "I see it, I see
+it!"
+
+"Open it, then," I said, which he proceeded to do with great energy, if
+with little success.
+
+"I b'lieve it's a knife with things in it," he said.
+
+My heart sank. "Oh, it's much too big for a knife, Hugh," I replied.
+
+"I 'spect it is, all the same," he said with a nod; "you've made it big
+on purpose; I positively know you have."
+
+At last it was opened, and I said, aunt-like, "Do you like it, Hugh?"
+
+"Awfully, thanks." Then he added a little wistfully, "Tommy's got a
+knife with things in it, a button'ook."
+
+Perhaps he saw I looked disappointed, for he added magnanimously, "I
+like trains next best, Aunt Woggles; only you see I didn't exactly pray
+for a train, that's why. What's Betty's?"
+
+"Betty must open it herself."
+
+"Don't you suppose," he said, "that she would like me to open it for
+her, because it is a hard thing opening parcels--and Betty says I may
+always open all her parcels when she is out."
+
+"Hugh!" I exclaimed.
+
+He rushed to the door. "Come on, Betty," he shouted. "Aunt Woggles wants
+you."
+
+If Betty's entrance was less tempestuous than Hugh's, her embrace was
+not less ecstatic. She put her arms round my neck and took her legs off
+the ground,--a quite simple process, and known to most aunts, I expect.
+The ultimate result would, no doubt, be strangulation. No one knows, of
+course, but among aunts it is a very general belief. Unlike Hugh, Betty
+kept her eyes religiously away from parcels, and she got very pink when
+I drew her attention to the very nobly one which was hers. Hugh stood
+by, urging her to open it, and offering to help her; but this Betty
+would not allow, and she opened it, her lips trembling with excitement.
+
+"Is it for my very own?" she whispered.
+
+"Absolutely for your very own, Betty," I answered.
+
+"Oh!" said Betty. "Hugh, it's all for my very, very own; Aunt Woggles
+says so; but you may play with it when you are very good."
+
+This in Hugh's eyes seemed so remote a contingency as to be scarcely
+worth consideration.
+
+When the cooking-stove stood revealed in all its glory, Betty was silent
+for a moment; then she said in a voice choked with emotion, "I shall
+cook dinners for you, all for your very own self--nobody else."
+
+My heart sank. "You will eat the things, won't you?" she asked, "if I
+make proper things, just like real things?"
+
+"Of course," I said. "Where's Sara?"
+
+"She wouldn't have her face washed," said Betty, "so she's waiting till
+she's good."
+
+Poor Sara! A strict disciplinarian is Betty!
+
+The regeneration of Sara was evidently a matter of moments only, for
+the words were hardly out of Betty's mouth when Sara, in all her clean,
+delicious dumpiness, appeared in the doorway. If there is one thing more
+delicious than a grubby Sara, it is a clean Sara. Sara after gardening
+is delicious, but Sara clean is assuredly the cleanest thing on God's
+earth. I have never seen a child look so new, and so straight out of
+tissue-paper, as Sara can look. She stared solemnly at her Aunt Woggles,
+and then proceeded to walk away in the opposite direction, which was an
+invitation on her part to me to follow and snatch her up in my arms. She
+bore the hug stoically for a reasonable time, and then said, "Oo 'urt."
+
+I realized, with the agony of remorse, that a very large aunt can by
+means of a brooch inflict exquisite torture on a very small niece.
+
+She wriggled herself free and began to rearrange her ruffled garments.
+"Yaya's got noo soos," she announced; "ved vuns."
+
+"No, blue, darling," I said.
+
+"Ved," said Sara.
+
+"No, sweetest, blue," I repeated in a somewhat professional but wholly
+affectionate manner.
+
+"Ved," said Sara with great decision; so I gave it up.
+
+"Sara always thinks blue is red," said Betty; "don't you, darling?"
+
+"No, boo," replied Sara; so the matter dropped.
+
+"Oo's tummin' to see Yaya's toys," said Sara.
+
+"Am I, darling? When?"
+
+"Now."
+
+"But Aunt Woggles has got something for you," I said in a triumphant
+voice.
+
+Sara showed no interest and pulled me by the hand toward the door.
+
+"Hand me that, Betty," I said, pointing to the parcel on the table.
+
+Betty handed it to me.
+
+"Here, Sara," I said, "I have got a darling white rabbit for you! Sara! A
+bunny!"
+
+"Yaya's got a blush upstairs, a lubbly blush," she said, disdaining even
+to look at the parcel. I held it toward her, undid it, I squeaked the
+squeak, I called the rabbit endearing names; but to no purpose. Sara
+looked the other way. A look I at last persuaded her to bestow upon the
+rabbit; but she gazed at its charms, unmoved.
+
+"Yaya doesn't yike nasty bunnies, only nice blushes," she said.
+
+"It's a hearth-brush dressed up," whispered Betty, "and it's dressed up
+in my dolly's cape, at least in one of my dolly's capes; she loves it.
+Aunt Woggles, do you think it is a good thing to make hearth-brushes say
+their prayers? Sara does."
+
+I followed Sara disconsolately to the nursery and was shown the beauties
+of the "lubbly blush."
+
+Nannie bemoaned her darling's taste, and the nursery-maid blushed for
+very shame.
+
+"Not but what it's quite clean, miss," Nannie said; "it's been
+thoroughly washed in carbolic."
+
+Meanwhile Sara was rocking herself backward and forward in a manner
+truly maternal and singing her version of "Jesus Tender" to her "lubbly
+blush."
+
+"I thought she would love the rabbit," I said, and Nannie, by way of
+consolation, assured me that there was really nothing Sara loved so
+much as a rabbit. I suppose Nannie knew, and that it was only another
+instance of the folly of judging from appearances.
+
+"You will love your bunny, won't you, darling?" said Nannie; "nice
+bunny!"
+
+"Nasty bunny," said Sara with great decision.
+
+"That's naughty, baby," said Nannie; "nice bunny!"
+
+"Naughty bunny," said Sara, "vake Yaya's yubbly vitty blush." And she
+resumed her singing with religious fervor.
+
+Nannie was really quite upset, and apologized for her charge. I accepted
+the apology and resolved then and there to send the despised rabbit
+to the Children's Hospital by the next post. Have you ever given a
+toy-balloon to a child, and had the child say, "Balloons don't amuse?" I
+have.
+
+Nannie then, by way of consolation, suggested that Sara should say her
+prayers at my knee. It was the greatest compliment she could pay
+any one. Sara consented after much pressure, and she knelt down and
+proceeded to pack up her face. No other word to my mind describes the
+process. First of all she shut her eyes tight. To keep them tight seemed
+to require a great physical effort; this was done by tightly screwing
+up her nose. Next she proceeded to gather her eyebrows into the smallest
+possible compass, and then she drew a deep breath, folded her small
+hands, and started off at a terrific pace, "Gaw bess parver yan muvver
+yan nannie yan hughyan betty yan dicky an aunt woggles yan ellen yan
+emma yan croft--yan blusby yan all ve vitty children yan make dem velly
+good boys yan make my nastyole bunnyagoodgirl. May Yaya get up?"
+
+"Not yet, baby, think," said Nannie.
+
+Sara thought, and then with a fresh access of solemnity repeated
+an entirely new version of the Lord's Prayer. Nannie understood it
+evidently, for at a point quite unintelligible to me, Nannie said, "Good
+girl!" and Sara jumped up.
+
+Nannie told me that nothing would induce Sara to pray that she might
+be made good. She was always very ready to make such petitions on the
+behalf of Betty and Hugh, but for herself, no. She is not like Betty,
+who at her age prayed, "Dear God, please make me a good little girl, but
+if you can't manage it, don't bother about it; Nannie will soon do it."
+
+Difficult and tedious as the task may have appeared to Betty, I think
+it was assuredly within the power of God to make her good without the
+intervention of Nannie. Dear Betty!
+
+Sara was then put to bed, and while Nannie brushed her hair, Sara
+brushed the hearth-brush's hair. Sara was very anxious to have it in her
+bath with her, but here Nannie was firm.
+
+Later the hearth-brush was dressed in a nightgown and laid beside Sara
+in her little bed. The last thing she did before going to sleep
+was to gaze at her darling "blush" with rapture and say,
+"Nasty--'ollid--bunny!"
+
+Her eyelashes fluttered and then gently fell on her cheek, as a
+butterfly hovers and then settles on the petal of a rose.
+
+"Leave it here, miss," said Nannie; "she'll see it when she wakes."
+
+I left the despised bunny and went to dress for dinner. Betty was
+waiting for me outside. "Is the cooking-stove for my very own self, Aunt
+Woggles?"
+
+"Absolutely, Betty. Why?"
+
+"Only because Hugh wondered if it wasn't or him, too. He only wondered,
+and I said I didn't suppose one present could be for two people, because
+then it wouldn't be such a very real present, would it?"
+
+I said, "Of course not"; and I told her the story of the two men who
+owned one elephant, and one man said to the other: "I don't know what
+you are going to do with your half; I am going to shoot mine!"
+
+"And did he, Aunt Woggles?" asked Betty, her eyes wide with horror.
+
+"I wonder," I said. "I'll race you to the end of the passage."
+
+"I won," cried Betty. "No, we both of us did," she added, slipping her
+hand into mine.
+
+That evening Diana told me that a few days before, she had heard the
+following conversation between Hugh and Betty:
+
+"I am going to shoot my cock."
+
+"Hugh!" said Betty, "don't, it's a darlin' cock."
+
+"But it doesn't lay eggs," said Hugh.
+
+"I don't think cocks are supposed to lay eggs," said Betty thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, I don't see why they shouldn't," said Hugh; "widowers have
+children."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+Suppose all aunts, that is to say, all professional aunt, know what it
+is to be visited at seven o'clock in the morning by nephews and nieces,
+fresh, vigorous, and rosy after a night's rest. Fresh, and oh! so
+vigorous and deliciously rosy were Hugh and Betty when they appeared at
+my bedside at seven o'clock the next morning.
+
+"Hullo!" said Hugh, "we've come. May we get into your bed? I'll get up
+steam and take a long run and jump in. Shall I?"
+
+I braced myself up for the shock. There is no need to go through the
+morning's program; I suppose every aunt knows it. Bears, camel-rides,
+robbers, and various other things, all of a distinctly energetic nature.
+At half past seven-you see it doesn't take long, any aunt can bear half
+an hour--Nannie appeared, carrying a deliciously rosy Sara with her hair
+done on the top, which makes her more than ever fascinating; and in
+her arms she carried her bunny--Sara's arms, I mean, of course. "Nice
+bunny," she said.
+
+"Who gave you your bunny?" I asked.
+
+"Jesus!" said Sara, triumphantly nodding her head and opening her eyes
+very wide. "Jesus makes all ve bunnies, and all ve vitty dickey birds,
+and all ve vitty fowers, and all ve big fowers and all ve ponge cakes,
+and Yaya."
+
+"And what is Sara going to do with her bunny?" I asked.
+
+"Vuv it," she said with ecstasy.
+
+"Shall I leave her?" asked Nannie.
+
+"What a foolish question, Nannie!" I said. "Could any one send away a
+blue dressing-be-gowned Sara?"
+
+"And shall I take the others, miss?"
+
+"Do," I replied.
+
+They went and left me in sole possession of Sara.
+
+"Shall I tell Sara a story?" I said. She nodded her head.
+
+"A storlie all about bunnies."
+
+So I began, "Once upon a time there was a big bunny."
+
+"A vitty bunny," said Sara.
+
+"A little bunny," I said. "Once upon a time there was a little bunny."
+
+"A velly, velly vitty bunny," said Sara.
+
+"Once upon a time there was a very, very little bunny," I repeated,
+emphasizing the "very, very little," as Sara had done. She cuddled into
+the bedclothes, evidently quite satisfied with the beginning as it now
+stood. "And the very, very little bunny lived in a nice hole--"
+
+"A nice bed," said Sara, "a velly nice bed and not in a vitty bed, but
+in a velly big bed, a velly, velly big bed with Aunt Woggles."
+
+"In a nice big bed with Aunt Woggles," I said, "and he was a very good
+little bunny."
+
+At this Sara rose in the bed and looked at me very severely.
+
+"Did he say his palayers eberly day?" she asked.
+
+"No, not prayers, darling. Bunnies don't say prayers; children say
+prayers."
+
+"Naughty bunnies!" said Sara with great severity.
+
+Dreading a religious discussion, which Sara loves, I proposed changing
+the story to "The Three Bears." She acquiesced with jumps of joy up and
+down, just where one would not choose to be jumped upon, and said, "Ve
+felee belairs."
+
+Here I fared no better: my version of the story was so hopelessly wrong,
+and I received such crushing correction at the hands of Sara, that I
+was glad to relinquish my office of story-teller and suggested that she
+should tell a story instead.
+
+This was evidently what she had wanted to do all along, for she began at
+once. She tells a story very much as she says her prayers, at the same
+terrific pace certainly. First of all she swallowed and took a deep
+breath, then she began, "Vunce there was a vitty blush--and not a bad
+nasty blush--it said its palayers ebery morning an nannie said good
+girly an then the blush vent to sleep in a vitty bed with Yaya."
+
+"Go slower, darling," I said. "Aunt Woggles can't quite understand."
+
+"Yan--ven--Yaya--voke up ve vitty--belush said, 'Good-morning,' yan Yaya
+said, 'Good-morning,' yan it was a nice bunny yan not a nasty bunny any
+more."
+
+Here Sara's thoughts were distracted, and the story ended abruptly for
+want of breath, or possibly of story. She refused to go on, and when
+pressed said with great decision, "Dey's all dead."
+
+She then had her share of camel-rides and bears, and by the time Nannie
+came I began to feel that I had earned my breakfast. I was one of the
+first down, and Bindon was evidently waiting for me, because as I went
+into the dining-room he took up his position behind a certain chair,
+which action on his part plainly indicated that I was to sit there.
+I wondered why. Could it be that I had arrived at the age when it is
+advisable for a woman to sit back to the light at breakfast? Was this
+only another instance of Bindon's devotion to us all? That the credit of
+the family is paramount in his mind, I know! All this flashed through
+my mind, but I saw a moment later that it was not of my complexion that
+Bindon thought, for on a plate before the chair behind which he stood,
+lay a small dark gray wad about the size of a five-shilling piece. I
+hesitated, and Bindon said in an undertone, "Miss Betty made it." Not a
+muscle of his face moved.
+
+I sat down and gazed at the awful result of my present to Betty.
+The--what shall I call it?--was gray, as I said before; it had a
+crisscross pattern on it, deeply indented, and snugly sunk in the middle
+of it was a currant. I sighed. My duty as a professional aunt was clear:
+had I not in a moment of weakness said I would eat anything Betty made,
+provided it was a proper thing? Had I here a loophole of escape? No, it
+was certainly, according to Betty's lights, a most proper thing. But why
+does dough, in the hands of the cleanest child, become dark gray?
+
+Bindon, having done his duty by Betty, and not being able on this
+occasion to do it by both of us, made no further explanation. Like the
+first step, it is no doubt the first bite that costs most dearly; and
+while I was pondering whether to take two bites or swallow it whole, Mr.
+Dudley came in and sat down opposite me. He is a young man who thinks
+that no woman he doesn't know can be worth knowing. When by force of
+circumstances he comes to know a fresh one, he always tells her he feels
+as if he had known her all her life, and talks of a previous existence,
+and so gets over a difficulty. I felt that it was a tribute to Diana
+that he treated me so kindly, and I earned his gratitude and commanded
+his respect by refusing food at his hands. I said I liked helping myself
+at breakfast. He insisted, however, on passing me the toast. This I felt
+was apart from Diana altogether.
+
+After a few moments the little gray wad attracted his attention, and his
+eyebrows expressed a wish to know what it was.
+
+"Betty made it," I said.
+
+"And what is it?"
+
+"I wonder!" I said. "I think it must come under the head of black
+bread."
+
+"What are you going to do with it?" he asked.
+
+I answered, "Why, eat it, of course; only I can't make up my mind how.
+What should you say, two bites or a swallow?"
+
+His interest was now thoroughly aroused; he had evidently never before
+met an aunt professionally. He looked at me solemnly and said, "You are
+going to eat that?"
+
+"I am an aunt, you see," said; "a professional aunt."
+
+"A what?" he asked.
+
+"A professional aunt," I answered. "You are an uncle, I suppose."
+
+"I am constantly getting wires to that effect, but I am hanged if I have
+ever eaten mud-pies."
+
+"No, that is part of the profession," I said; "you see, I promised
+Betty."
+
+Mr. Dudley relapsed into silence. I had given him food for reflection.
+
+Here Betty appeared, "not to eat anything," she carefully explained.
+Hugh came next, followed a moment later by Sara, who was beside herself
+with excitement, which was centered in the blue ribbon in her hair, to
+which she had that morning been promoted. A red curl had become more
+rebellious than its fellows, and it was tied up with a blue ribbon, in
+the fashion beloved of young mothers. Diana dislikes any reference made
+to poodles.
+
+"Yaya's got a ved vimvirn in her har," she announced.
+
+We all expressed the keenest interest and unbounded surprise. One very
+well-meaning person put down his knife and fork and said he was too
+surprised to eat any more breakfast; whereupon Hugh said, "You needn't
+be so very funny, because Sara doesn't understand those sort of jokes."
+
+Whether Sara understood it or not, it seemed to encourage her to further
+revelations, and she announced with bated breath, "Yaya's got ved
+vimvims in her--" She opened her eyes very wide and nodded very
+mysteriously, and was about to suit her actions to her words and
+disclose the ribbons in question, when Diana, with a promptitude quite
+splendid, administered a banana. Sara ate some with relish, paused, and
+said in a loud voice, subdued by banana, "jormalies." She was not going
+to be put off with a banana.
+
+Betty was very much shocked, and with a face of virtuous indignation
+whispered in my ear, "Sara means-" I hastily stopped Betty because her
+whispers are louder than Sara's loudest conversation and very much
+more distinct. And after all there is everything in the way a word is
+pronounced. Without any context I think "jormalies" might pass anywhere
+as a perfectly right and proper word, to be used on any occasion.
+
+Hugh, too, had something to say on the absorbing topic of ribbons,
+and on such a subject I thought he might safely be trusted. On what an
+unsafe foundation is built the faith of an aunt!
+
+"Aunt Woggles," he said, "has got pink ribbons in her nightie; it's
+lovely, and she doesn't do her hair in funny little things like--"
+
+Here David distracted Hugh's attention by telling him an absolute
+untruth concerning a fox to be seen out of the window. The first of
+April is the only day in the whole year on which the word "fox" won't
+take him flying to the window.
+
+Betty, perhaps by way of changing the conversation, said, "You did eat
+my cake, didn't you, Aunt Woggles?"
+
+"Of course I did, Betty."
+
+"Don't you believe it," said Mr. Dudley.
+
+"I always believe my Aunt Woggles," said Betty with infinite scorn. "Was
+it nice, Aunt Woggles?" Mercifully she didn't wait for an answer, but
+continued: "I lost the currant three times, but I found it all right.
+I thought I had trodden on it, but I hadn't, because I looked on the
+bottom of my shoe and it wasn't there. I did have lots of currants, only
+when I dropped them Mungo ate them all up, except this one. He didn't
+eat this one because I stopped him. I said, 'Drop it, Mungo!' and he
+did. It was a good thing he didn't eat it, wasn't it? I made lines
+across, did you see? All across the cake! I made those with a hairpin.
+It was a good plan, wasn't it?"
+
+Somehow or other my breakfast had fallen short of my expectations. But
+what I had lost in appetite I had perhaps gained in other ways, for I
+had until then undoubtedly existed in the mind of Mr. Dudley only under
+the shadow of Diana's charming personality. I now took my stand alone,
+as the Aunt Woggles who ate mud-pies, I am afraid; but still it is
+something to have a separate existence. Is it?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+Diana's children are of a distinctly religious turn of mind. I think
+most children are, and what wonderful, curious thing their religion
+is! Looking back to my own childhood, I remember thinking, or rather
+knowing, that the Holy Ghost was a Shetland shawl. We called our shawls
+"comforters"; we wore them when we went to parties in the winter. "I will
+not leave you comfortless," could mean nothing else. To complete the
+illusion, we had in the nursery a picture of the Pentecost, the Holy
+Ghost descending in the form of a cloudy substance, not unlike a
+Shetland shawl. I was so sure that I was right, that I never thought of
+asking any one. When I grew older and told my mother, she said, "But why
+didn't you ask me, darling?" forgetting that when a child knows a thing
+it never asks; when in doubt it will ask, but not when it knows. It is
+a difficult and dangerous thing to shake a child's belief, and a
+pity, too. For if we could all believe as simply as a child does, how
+different it would make life! If Diana has a fault, it is that she
+takes her children too seriously. She thinks it is wrong to tell them,
+"Children should be seen and not heard," simply because they have asked
+a question she can't answer. Aunts have been known to do it as a last
+resource, on occasions of great danger.
+
+Hugh wants to know if God put in the quack before he made the duck. It
+is difficult, isn't it, to answer that sort of question?
+
+On another occasion he asked Betty if God was alive. Betty, eager to
+instruct, said, "My dear Hugh, God is a Spirit."
+
+"Then we can boil our milk on him." That was a poser for Betty.
+
+Diana was at a loss, too, when Hugh announced his intention of going to
+Heaven. She asked him what he would do when he got there. I thought the
+question a little unwise at the time. "Oh!" said Hugh, "stroll round
+with Jesus, I suppose, and have a shot at the rabbits."
+
+Diana's position was a difficult one. It was this: if she told Hugh
+there were no rabbits in Heaven, he wouldn't pray to go there; and if
+she said there was no shooting in Heaven, Hugh would know for certain
+that his father wouldn't want to go there, and it wouldn't do for Hugh
+to think his father didn't want to go to Heaven. It was a difficulty,
+but Hugh's Heaven was or is a very real and very happy place to him. It
+is strangely like Hames; and isn't the home of every happy child very
+near to Heaven? Surely it lies at its very gates, which we could see
+if it was not for the mountains which intervene, those beautiful snow
+mountains, which foolish grown-ups call clouds.
+
+Diana has come triumphantly out of situations more difficult, and she
+will no doubt surmount those connected with the spiritual upbringing of
+Hugh, Betty, and Sara.
+
+It is the custom of Diana to read the Bible every morning with her
+children, and they resent any deviation from custom.
+
+After breakfast on the particular Sunday over which this shooting-party
+extended, Hugh marched through the hall (where most of us were
+assembled) with his Bible under his arm, followed by Betty, carrying
+a smaller Bible. Hugh's seemed particularly cumbersome. He cast a
+reproachful glance at his mother and her guests, and said to Betty,
+"I will teach you, darling."
+
+Betty said, "Can you, Hugh?" and he said, "Rather!"
+
+Into the drawing-room he stumped, followed by the impressed Betty.
+
+"You may come, Aunt Woggles," he said, "if you don't talk."
+
+I promised not to talk, and sat down to write letters.
+
+Hugh sat down on the sofa and Betty plumped down beside him. She
+carefully arranged her muslin skirts over her long black-stockinged
+legs, and then told Hugh to begin.
+
+"What's it going to be about?" she asked.
+
+"All sorts of things," said Hugh grandly. "Perhaps about Adam and
+Eve, and Jonah and the whale, and Samson and Elijah. Do you know the
+diff'rence between Enoch and Elijah? That's the first thing."
+
+"No, I don't," said Betty reluctantly.
+
+"Well, darling, you must remember the diff'rence is that Enoch only
+walked with God, but the carriage was sent for Elijah!"
+
+"Was it a carriage and pair, Hugh?"
+
+"More, I expect."
+
+"What next, Hugh?"
+
+"We'll just look until we find something." And Hugh opened the Bible.
+
+"It's upside down," whispered Betty.
+
+Hugh assumed the expression my spaniel puts on when he meets a dog
+bigger than himself--an expression of extreme earnestness of purpose
+combined with a desire to look neither to the right nor to the left, but
+to get along as fast as he can.
+
+Hugh assumed an immense dignity and looked straight in front of him,
+just to show Betty he was thinking and had not heard what she said,
+while he turned the Bible round.
+
+"Go on, Hugh," said Betty humbly, feeling it was she who had made the
+mistake. How often do men make women feel this!
+
+"Now, Betty," he said, "you must listen properly and not talk, because
+it's a proper lesson, just like mother gives us when visitors aren't
+here." A pause, then Hugh said in a very solemn voice, "You know,
+darling, Jesus would have been born in the manger, but the dog in the
+manger wouldn't let him!"
+
+I stole out of the room.
+
+"You don't disturb us, Aunt Woggles," called out Hugh; "you truthfully
+don't."
+
+Hugh had evidently told all he knew, for in a few minutes he came out of
+the drawing-room and joined us in the hall. "We've done!" he exclaimed;
+"we've had our lesson all the same."
+
+"I am sorry, Hugh," said Diana.
+
+He slipped his hand in hers as a sign of forgiveness, and by way of
+making matters quite right, I said, "You know, Hugh, mothers must look
+after their guests. Their children are always with them, but friends
+only occasionally."
+
+Why do aunts interfere? Retribution speedily follows.
+
+"Visitors are mostly always here," said Hugh plaintively. "When you have
+children of your own, Aunt Woggles, then--"
+
+"A fox, a fox, Hugh!" cried some one.
+
+He rushed to the window.
+
+"That's two foxes today that weren't there when I looked," said Hugh; "I
+shan't look next time."
+
+This was a desperate state of affairs; an attack might come at any time,
+and we should have exhausted our ammunition.
+
+"The best thing," said Diana, "is for those who are going to church to
+get ready."
+
+Betty and Hugh were of course going; Sara wanted to, but those in
+authority deemed it wiser that she should wait till she was older.
+This offended her very much, as did any reference to her age. But the
+decision was a wise one: she prayed too fervently, she sang too lustily,
+and she talked too audibly, to admit of reverent worship on the part of
+the younger members of the congregation, and of the older ones, too, I
+am afraid.
+
+One memorable Sunday she did go to church, as a great treat; and
+when the hymn--"Peace, perfect peace" was given out, a beatific smile
+illumined her face, and with her hymn-book upside-down she was preparing
+to sing, when Diana said,--whispered rather--You don't know this,
+darling."
+
+"Yes, I do, mummy, peace in the valley of Bong."
+
+Betty walked to church with me. "Aunt Woggles," she said, "you know the
+gentleman in the Bible who lived inside the whale?"
+
+"Yes, darling," I said, "I do remember." My heart sank at the
+difficulties presented by Jonah as gentleman.
+
+"Well," she said, "what dye suppose he did without candles in the dark
+passages of the whale?"
+
+Betty evidently pictured the dark passages of the whale to be what
+Haines used to be before electric light was installed. The whale, like
+a house, must be modernized to meet the requirements of the day. When
+Betty starts asking questions, she mercifully quickly follows one with
+another, and does not wait for answers. The interior economy of the
+whale suggested various trains of thought, and she went skipping along
+beside me, or rather in front of me, propounding the most astounding
+theories. I was quite glad when Mr. Dudley and Hugh caught us up.
+
+"You did come along fast, old man," said Mr. Dudley.
+
+"It wasn't me, it was you," panted Hugh. "It truthfully was, Aunt
+Woggles, and he wasn't going to church at all till I told him you were
+going. I'm awfully out of breath because he wanted to catch you up, so
+it wasn't me all the time."
+
+I was sorry Hugh and Mr. Dudley had caught us up.
+
+Mr. Dudley murmured something about "Young ruffian," and I felt it my
+duty as well as my pleasure to tell Hugh not to talk so much.
+
+"I 'sect you want to sit next my Aunt Woggles, don't you?" said Hugh
+to Mr. Dudley; "but you can't, because I said, 'bags I sit next Aunt
+Woggles in church' before she came to stay, ever so long before,
+before two Christmases ago, I should think it was, or nearly before two
+Christmases ago!"
+
+Betty's grasp on my hand tightened, and I returned it with a reassuring
+pressure, as much as to say, "There are two sides to every aunt in
+church, dear Betty; it is a comfort to know that."
+
+"I may sit next you, mayn't I?"
+
+"Yes, Betty," I said.
+
+"You are very rosy, Aunt Woggles," said Hugh. "Do you love my Aunt
+Woggles?" he continued, dancing backward in front of Mr. Dudley.
+
+"Of course he does," I said boldly, taking the bull by the horns.
+"Mr. Dudley loves even his enemies, especially on Sundays."
+
+Hugh looked puzzled, and pondered. Before he had come to any definite
+conclusion as to how this affected Mr. Dudley's feelings towards me, we
+reached the lichgate, where we found the rest of the party awaiting us.
+We all separated: Diana took Betty, who gazed at me mournfully, but
+was too loyal to her mother to say anything; Hugh gave a series of
+triumphant jumps, which added pain to Betty's already disappointed
+expression.
+
+In church I found myself allotted to what we call the overflow pew,
+which is at right angles to the family pews and in full view of them.
+It is the children's favorite pew only, I imagine, because they don't
+always sit there. Hugh sat very close to me, and kept on giving little
+wriggles and gazing up at me, then at Mr. Dudley, and snuggling closer
+to me as if to emphasize the superiority of his position over that of
+Mr. Dudley.
+
+"Hugh," I whispered, "you must behave."
+
+"He didn't sit next you, after all," he whispered.
+
+I say whispered, but must explain that Hugh's whisper is a very
+far-reaching thing. He loves a victory. I hope that when he grows up he
+will be a generous victor. He says he is going to be a dangerous man; I
+can believe it.
+
+Betty, the vanquished one, stared solemnly in front of her, not deigning
+to notice Hugh's triumph. What pleasure is there to children in sitting
+next to some particular person in church? I remember, as a child, it was
+a matter of earnest prayer during the week that on Sunday I might sit
+next, some particular person in church. "And, O Lord, if it be for my
+good, let me sit next the door." A child's religion is a very real thing
+to him, and not only a Saturday-to-Monday thing.
+
+I looked at Betty's serious little face and wished that I could for one
+moment read her thoughts. Her eyes, such lovely eyes, were fixed on
+the preacher's face. What did his sermon convey to her? It was a
+particularly uninteresting one, I remember, an appeal on behalf of the
+curates' fund. Her eyes never left his face--such solemn, searching,
+truthful eyes. I think a child like Betty should not be allowed to go
+to church on such occasions, for what is the use of preaching against
+matrimony on the one hand, and that, I suppose, is what the moral of
+such a sermon should be,--and on the other hand holding up an incentive
+to matrimony in the very alluring shape of Betty? For, personally, I
+think Betty would be a very wonderful possession for any curate to have.
+
+Hugh was growing restless and I was bearing the brunt of it. Nannie,
+feeling for me, leaned over from the back pew and said, "Don't rest your
+head on your Aunt Woggles."
+
+"I came to church on purpose to rest my head on my Aunt Woggles's
+chest," said Hugh, again in what he calls a whisper. A moment later, he
+asked, "Is it done?"
+
+It was, and he jumped up.
+
+"May I sit next you next Sunday, Aunt Woggles?" he said, so soon as we
+got outside the church door.
+
+"No, Hugh," I said.
+
+"I bet I do, all the same," he said.
+
+"Aunt Woggles," said Betty, as we walked home, "I collect for the
+prevention of children; do you suppose Mr. Dudley would give me a
+penny?"
+
+"I am sure he would, darling, but it is the prevention of cruelty to
+children--the prevention of cruelty."
+
+"That's such a long thing to say, Aunt Woggles, don't you suppose he
+would understand if I did say it a little wrong?"
+
+"Perhaps, darling, but it is always best to say things right."
+
+"Yes, I will, but I was only supposing, supposing I didn't."
+
+At luncheon Diana cautioned Betty against swallowing a fish-bone. "You
+might die, darling, if you did."
+
+"Then I shall swallow every single bone I can," announced Betty.
+
+"But, darling," said Diana, "why do you say that? You don't want to die.
+You are quite happy, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes, I'm very happy, but I want to die, all the same."
+
+"Oh, darling, don't say that," said Diana; "there is a great deal for
+you to do in this world before you die."
+
+"Yes, but you see, darling," said Betty, "if I don't die soon, I shall
+be too old to sit on Jesus' knee."
+
+Diana is very particular about the children's manners, and Hugh came
+face to face with a great difficulty a moment later, over his ginger
+beer. "If I don't say I thank you, mother doesn't like it, and if I do
+say I thank you, Bindon stops pouring."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+In answer to a really desperate telegram from Zerlina, I left Hames
+hurriedly, and arrived at Zerlina's, to find her out and all the
+children apparently well. I was shown upstairs into the drawing-room. In
+Diana's house I am never "shown" anywhere; however, in Zerlina's I am,
+so it is no use discussing that question. The drawing-room into which I
+was shown was empty of furniture except for the sofas and chairs which
+were arranged round the room against the wall. As Zerlina's room does
+not err as a rule on the side of emptiness, I realized that there was
+going to be a party. I felt like the child who said, "There's been a
+wedding, I smell rice!" One knows these things by instinct.
+
+The butler solemnly informed me that there was going to be a party, and
+that Miss Hyacinth would be down in a moment.
+
+I thought it odd that Zerlina should have said nothing about a party;
+but then she never says anything about measles, or whooping-cough, or
+re-painting rooms, until I am within the doors and unable to escape. I
+remembered she had urged me on this occasion to come early. I sat down
+on a sofa and sadly fixed my gaze on the parquet floor. How different
+had been my arrival at Hames! My conscience smote me. I had no train, no
+cooking stove, no woolly rabbit in my box. But then neither was there
+a Hugh, Betty, and Sara. At Hames should I have sat in the drawing-room?
+Never! Of course I know what some people will say: that it is my fault;
+if I had treated the children as I treated Betty, Hugh, and Sara, it
+would have made all the difference; but it wouldn't, really. It is, the
+mother of the children who makes the difference; it is her attitude to
+the aunt which is adopted by the children. If Diana had been out,
+the house would have resounded with shrieks for Aunt Woggles. But in
+Zerlina's house children never shriek, people never rush to the nursery.
+The children are always tidied before they are brought down to see me.
+
+Of course some people will again say, "Quite right"; and it is quite
+right that for such people they should be tidied; but do those people
+realize what a wall tidiness builds between child and grown-up? Have
+they ever thought what a boy feels when his mother comes down to see him
+at school and the first thing she does when he comes into the room is
+to say that his collar is dirty, or that his hands want washing? At
+that moment, perhaps, she lays the first brick in the wall which builds
+between mother and son. He is a happy boy and she a blessed mother who
+stand always with no wall between them. All a boy demands of his mother
+when she comes to see him at school is that she shall behave just
+like other people, and that she shall dress properly. If she can be
+beautiful, so much the better: it will redound enormously to his credit.
+Boys are very sensitive about their belongings, but when praise can
+be bestowed they bestow it, as in the case of Tommy, who wrote to his
+father, who had been down to the school to play in a match, Fathers
+against Sons, "Dear father, you did look odd, but you made the second
+biggest score."
+
+While I was pondering over these things, the door opened and my niece
+Hyacinth came in.
+
+"Hullo!" she said; "mum's out."
+
+"So I hear," I said; "won't you kiss me?"
+
+"Oh! I forgot," she said, twirling round on one leg and holding out a
+cheek to be kissed. "There's going to be a party to it."
+
+"So I see," I said; "what sort of a party?"
+
+"Oh! it's the end-up of the dancing class, four to seven; that's why mum
+asked you to come early."
+
+"She isn't in yet?" I asked innocently.
+
+"Oh! she's not coming," said Hyacinth, raising her eyebrows and
+laughing; "she always has something to do on dancing days. The Frauleins
+get on her nerves. They sit all round the room."
+
+And Hyacinth indicated the position of the Frauleins with a sweep of her
+arm.
+
+"What time is it now?" I asked.
+
+"Half past three," she said; "I'm ready."
+
+"I'm not," I said savagely.
+
+I went upstairs, vowing vengeance on Zerlina. I could have shaken
+Hyacinth, poor child, and why? Because her legs were too long, or her
+skirts too short, or the bow in her hair too large? What a disagreeable,
+cross-grained professional aunt I was! Or did I miss the hug Hyacinth
+might have given me?
+
+I was only just ready when the children began to arrive. I flew
+downstairs and found not only children in every shape and form, but
+mothers in big hats and trailing skirts, and Frauleins in small hats and
+skirts curtailed, mademoiselles and nannies. The nannies I handed over
+to the nursery department, and the mothers and the Frauleins and the
+mademoiselles I arranged in a dado round the room, making inappropriate
+remarks to each in turn. No surprise was expressed at the absence of
+Zerlina.
+
+The children began to dance. There was a particularly painstaking little
+boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in
+places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the
+left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones
+from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited her actions to her words by
+the uplifting of the leg corresponding to that recommended to Tomus's
+consideration, and bringing it down with emphasis on the parquet floor.
+
+By the sudden quickening of leg-action on the part of my painstaking
+friend, I knew him to be Tomus, and by that only, so many of the boys
+looked as if they might be Tomus. The real Tomus asserted himself
+manfully, however, by using the exactly opposite leg to that ordered by
+Fraulein. I liked this spirit of independence, and determined to make
+friends with him so soon as that dance should be over. I took the
+liberty of introducing myself; he made no remark but took me by the hand
+and led me out on to the landing, and there he found two chairs in the
+orthodox position. Into one of these he wriggled himself by a backward
+and upward movement, and I sat in the other. How absurdly easy it is for
+a grown-up to sit down! I waited for Thomas to make a remark; I might be
+waiting still, if I had not made a beginning. He looked at me under his
+eyelashes, and tried not to smile. It was an effort, I could see, and I
+could tell just where the dimples would come. When the effort became too
+great and the dimples asserted themselves beyond recall, he looked
+away and put out a minute portion of his tongue. Having done that, he
+subsided into grave self-possession.
+
+I began to feel embarrassed, and asked him how old he was. He smiled.
+"Do you like dancing, Thomas?" I said.
+
+He looked away, and every time I addressed him he seemed to retreat
+farther into his chair, until I had fears that he would disappear
+altogether from my sight. His waist-line seemed to be the
+vanishing-point. I made no further effort, and relapsed into silence.
+Thomas continued to gaze at me and smile. At last he extended a fat
+little hand, uncurled one by one four soft little fingers, and revealed,
+lying in his palm, a short screw. It was evidently his greatest
+treasure, for the moment.
+
+"Is that for me, Thomas?" I asked. "Nope," he said, shaking his head.
+
+"Is it your very own?"
+
+"Yeth," said Thomas, drawing in his breath. He shut his little hand, put
+out his tongue just the smallest bit, and became serious and silent.
+
+"Is it a present?" I asked. Having got so far, it seemed a pity not
+to go on. He had done me the greatest honor that a small boy can do a
+woman, which, by the way, was what our Nannie said when she told us that
+a strange man had proposed to her on a penny steamboat.
+
+Thomas shook his head and said, "Nope."
+
+"Did you find it?" I asked.
+
+He nodded. "I always find fings," he said.
+
+Beyond that I could get nothing out of him. I have not often sat out
+with a more embarrassing partner. To be continually stared at and
+never spoken to would, I think, make the boldest woman shy. There was
+a stolidity about Thomas that promised well for England's future. There
+was a steady resistance from attack that was really admirable; but I was
+not altogether sorry when Fraulein pounced upon him. As she led him off
+I heard him say, "Parties do last a long time, don't they, Leilein?"
+
+Having lost Thomas, I sought a new partner. A tall, fair girl with
+wide, gray eyes, a pink-and-white complexion, a beautiful mouth, and a
+delicately refined nose, interested me, as I imagine she has continued
+to do every one who has met her. She reminded me of spring, with birds
+singing and flowers flowering and trees bursting, just as Diana does.
+As it was quite the correct thing for girls to dance with one another, I
+made so bold as to ask her for a dance. With the timidity of a boy just
+out of Etons, or perhaps I should say, of a shy boy just out of Etons, I
+approached her. "Right-o," she said, "let's see."
+
+She puckered her penciled eyebrows and studied her program. "The third
+after the two next?"
+
+She bowed gravely, and I said, "Thank you." I felt very young and
+inexperienced as I returned the bow.
+
+"That's all right," she said. "Where shall I find you? It doesn't
+matter, I shall know you again"; and she had the audacity to write on
+her program, for I saw her do it, "white dress, red hair."
+
+She was borne off by a triumphant boy, who looked at me as much as to
+say, "You're jolly well sold if you think you are going to nab this
+dance."
+
+I asked a hungry-looking boy with many freckles who she was. "Oh! that's
+Dolly," he said; "she is a flyer, isn't she?"
+
+"Dolly who?" I asked.
+
+"Oh! just Dolly; that does." He looked away, looked back, hesitated,
+and swallowed. I, feeling that he perhaps needed the assistance a man
+sometimes requires of a woman, encouragement, smiled at him.
+
+"You wouldn't dance this, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"Certainly," I answered.
+
+We danced. He was a nice boy, very much in earnest, very much afraid of
+tiring me, very much afraid of letting me go, too shy to stop, until I
+suggested it, for which act of consideration he seemed grateful.
+
+He told me he had five brothers, all older than himself; that he never
+had new trousers, always the other boys' cut down; that he liked school;
+wanted a bicycle more than anything in the world--of his very own, of
+course; wanted a pony of his very own; wanted a dog of his very own. He
+hadn't anything of his very own.
+
+I said I supposed he thought his eldest brother very lucky.
+
+"Because of the trousers?" he asked.
+
+I said, "Well, yes, I suppose he has the new ones."
+
+"Well," he said, "you see he doesn't. That's the chowse of the whole
+thing. He is the eldest, but you see Dick's the biggest, so he gets the
+new trousers. It is hard, isn't it?"
+
+I said it was indeed.
+
+"The best of it is," he said, "I am catching jackup. He is in an awful
+wax. I shouldn't be surprised if I were bigger than him next holidays.
+Do you like dancing? I simply loathe it--not with you, I don't mean I."
+
+He told me many other confidences, and I was really sorry when he
+remembered, with an evident pang, that he had to dance with that "rum
+little kid over there."
+
+I was quite certain that he would never break a promise. I could picture
+him going through life always keeping promises, rashly made, no doubt.
+I wondered what he would talk to girls about at dances years
+hence--trousers? Hardly. By that time he would have trousers of his very
+own, and they would cease, in consequence, to be things of interest.
+
+He would be a soldier--of that I could have no doubt. He was the kind of
+boy England wants and can still get, thank God! say pessimists what they
+will.
+
+While I was awaiting my Dolly dance, I came upon a small, disconsolate
+boy.
+
+"I'm looking for an empty partner," he said.
+
+I captured a passing girl, very small, and they danced away together.
+The boy I could see was very energetic, the girl was very small and fat.
+As they passed me I heard her say, "I--can't--go--so--fast!"
+
+"Very sorry," said the small boy, "but I must keep up with the music."
+
+Dolly found me. "I think I had better dance gentleman," she said; "I
+think I am as tall as you." With a tremendous effort she drew her slim
+figure to its full height, and, gazing up into my face she had the
+audacity to say, "Yes, I do just look down upon you; anyhow, men
+aren't always taller than girls. My cousin says so, and she goes to
+dances--heaps--and she is six foot."
+
+We started off, I felt at once, on a perilous course. "You see," she
+said, "I had better--steer--because" (bump we went into somebody),
+"because--I dance once a week--always" (crash), "sometimes oftener--so
+I get--plenty of practice" (bang) "in steering, and that helps. I love
+dancing--don't you? Oh, that's all right--it's--only--the stupid--old
+mantelpiece--I always go into that--it sticks out so--doesn't it? It is
+hard--rather!"
+
+Dolly was a flyer and no mistake. I was brought to a standstill at last
+by colliding with Thomas's Fraulein.
+
+"It's all right," said Dolly generously, "you didn't hurt us!"
+
+Fraulein was hurled on to a sofa and made no remark. She gave up
+temporarily the management of Thomas's left leg.
+
+"Shall we sit out?" said Dolly. "It is hot, isn't it?"
+
+She fanned herself with a very small program and tossed her hair back
+from her face. It was such lovely hair.
+
+"Hair is beastly stuff, isn't it?" she said. "Wouldn't you love to be
+a boy? Oh, I promised mother not to say I 'beastly'; that's one of the
+things I would like to be a boy for, because boys may do such an awful
+lot of things."
+
+I soon found out that Dolly liked boys better than girls.
+
+She loved horses and dogs.
+
+She hated and detested bearing-reins.
+
+She didn't want to come out.
+
+She thought grown-ups silly, except some--
+
+She loved the country and strawberry ice.
+
+She hated dull lessons, and I very soon discovered that there were none
+other than dull.
+
+She collected stamps.
+
+She longed to have a pet monkey or a brother, she didn't much mind
+which.
+
+At the mention of brothers I looked down at Dolly's slim legs, clothed
+in fine black silk stockings, at the valenciennes lace on her muslin
+frock, and I imagined that if she had any brothers, the younger ones
+would be quite likely to have started life in trousers of their own.
+Yes, Dolly looked like it. I learned a great deal from her in the time
+it had taken me to get "yeth" and "nope" out of Thomas.
+
+The energetic boy who had been obliged to keep up with the music at all
+costs, the little fat girl's in particular, came up to me, and said in
+an aggrieved voice, "Miss Daly has spoilt my program; she can't write,
+and she has written big D's all over it. Will you write me out a fresh
+one?"
+
+Which I, of course, did. Really it was very careless of Miss Daly.
+
+The children danced hard, with intervals for tea and refreshment; and
+as seven o'clock struck, there was a transformation scene. With
+conscientious punctuality the party-dressed children turned, into little
+or big woolen bundles, as the case might be. The last bundle I saw was a
+pink woolen one, weeping bitterly. My heart was wrung. The noisy crying
+of a child is bad enough, but when it is the soft weeping of a broken
+heart, it is unbearable. Of course it was my friend Thomas. I stood on
+the staircase unable to do anything, for he was quickly borne from the
+arms of Fraulein by a big footman, and no doubt deposited in a brougham
+in the outer darkness. Poor Thomas!
+
+I hoped that the right sort of mother would be at home to unroll that
+pink bundle, a mother who would pretend that it could not be her darling
+who was crying, but a strange little boy with a face quite unknown to
+her. Where could he have come from? And so on, until Thomas would be
+ashamed to be seen with a strange face, and would smile, and then his
+mother would say, "What is it, my darling?" because, of course, it was
+her own darling who was crying, and she would never rest till she knew
+why.
+
+I went back to the drawing-room quite happy that Thomas should be
+unrolled by the right sort of mother, and as I walked across the room,
+my foot slipped on something. I looked to see what it was I had trodden
+on. It was a short screw, Thomas's precious possession. "That was why
+the poor pink bundle was crying!"
+
+"Hyacinth," I said, "who was Thomas?"
+
+"Which one? There was little Thomas and the Thomas who lives a long way
+off, and then just plain Thomas."
+
+"I mean the fat little Thomas who danced so hard."
+
+"Oh! that's the little Thomas," said Hyacinth.
+
+"Where does he live?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, quite close; when we go to tea there we walk. He hasn't got a
+mother, so there's no drawing-room. She died," added Hyacinth, as if it
+was an every-day occurrence that Thomas should be left without a mother,
+instead of its being a heart-breaking tragedy. A child with no mother,
+no mother to unwrap the pink bundle, no mother to grieve for the screw,
+no mother to understand things. Perhaps his mother had been a Diana sort
+of mother.
+
+"Oh, Thomas," I thought, "I must send you back your screw." I didn't
+care what any one said--he should have it.
+
+If he had had a mother, it wouldn't have mattered, because she would
+have known it was a screw he had lost, and she would have known just
+what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing
+about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And
+of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I
+suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my
+only excuse a small screw. But still I went!
+
+I pictured a lonely child in a large house with a Fraulein and a nurse,
+perhaps two; those I could face. A tall, sad father I had never thought
+of! I am afraid I am not suited for the profession, I am too impulsive.
+
+I rang the bell. The door was opened by a solemn man-servant, who did
+not show the surprise he must have felt when I asked for Master Thomas.
+Another, still more solemn, showed me into a downstairs room. I refused
+to give my name, and a very large, serious Thomas rose from a chair as I
+was ushered in, "A lady to see Master Thomas." So my errand was in part
+explained, but the part left to tell was by far the most difficult. If
+only Thomas had lost anything but a screw! No father could be expected
+to know how it had been treasured. Supposing Thomas had been crying
+because he had a pain, which sometimes comes to children after tea?
+Supposing he hadn't been crying for his screw at all? Supposing he
+repudiated all knowledge of it?
+
+But here I was, screw in hand, and my story to tell. I told it. I was
+grateful to the tall, sad Thomas for being so solemn, and not even
+smiling, when I mentioned the screw. He said he was very grateful for my
+kindness, and he went so far as to say he was sure Thomas had valued the
+screw.
+
+While some one was coming, for whom he had rung, he told me that when he
+had taken Thomas to the Zoo, the only thing which he was really excited
+about was the mouse in the elephant's house! Somehow or other that
+little story put me at my ease, for it showed that the big Thomas at
+least understood in part the mind of a child.
+
+A nurse, not sad-looking I was glad to see, came in answer to the bell,
+and the big Thomas asked if the little Thomas had lost a screw? In that
+I was disappointed, the best nurse in the world might not know of a
+screw. But the big Thomas did not wait to hear; he was sure the little
+Thomas had, and he said we were coming upstairs to restore it to him. Of
+course I had said by this time that I was Zerlina's sister-in-law.
+
+We went upstairs, I following the tall Thomas, past the drawing-room,
+past that bedroom whose door I knew was closed. A mother's bedroom is
+nearly always in the same place in a London house, a child blindfolded
+could find it, and the handle of a mother's door is always within the
+reach of the smallest child; and so easily does it turn, that the door
+opens at the slightest pressure of the smallest fingers.
+
+Up we went to Thomas's own bedroom. There in his bed he sat, no longer
+crying, but still sad and solemn, with evidences in his face of a sorrow
+that rankled. He smiled when he saw me, too much of a gentleman to show
+any surprise at seeing me in his bedroom.
+
+"Thomas," I said, "I have brought you back your screw which you lost." I
+put it in his outstretched hand, and a smile rippled all over his face.
+
+Suddenly from out the darkness came a stentorian voice, "Right hand,
+Tomus!" It was Fraulein! Thomas put out his right hand, and I, putting
+aside all convention, gave him a real "Sara hug" for the sake of that
+mother whose door was closed. It then began to dawn upon me how very
+unconventional it was of me to be hugging a comparatively strange child,
+in a perfectly strange house, and I hastily said good-night to the
+small Thomas and the big Thomas, nurses and Fraulein, and literally ran
+downstairs, followed of course by the big Thomas. At the foot of the
+stairs I ran into the arms of Mr. Dudley.
+
+His exclamation of "Aunt Woggles" was involuntary, I felt sure, and he
+had every right to visit a sad, tall Mr. Thomas. But I thought Diana
+ought to have told me that I was likely to meet him at--Well, a
+stranger's house; so how could she? The only thing that consoled me was
+that in all probability Mr. Dudley would explain my profession in
+life, and that I had a screw loose. Yes, that would exactly explain the
+position. Otherwise I didn't exactly know how he could describe me.
+
+Well, Zerlina of course said I was mad. She didn't agree with me that
+the screw could not possibly have been sent back in an envelope with a
+few words of explanation. She said she would have bought a nice toy for
+the child. What's the good of a toy to a child when he has lost a screw
+which he found his very own self, any more than a squeaking rabbit is
+to a child who has a "lubbly blush"? That was a lesson I had lately
+learned.
+
+I didn't say all that to Zerlina, because, you see, she is a mother, and
+I couldn't understand these things. She was very much surprised at being
+late for the party, so surprised. She was full of apologies.
+
+It was so good of me to help her! Had the darling children enjoyed
+themselves?
+
+I said, yes, they had, and the adorable mothers, and the delicious
+Frauleins, and the heavenly mademoiselles. At this Zerlina looked a
+little pained, and I was sorry I was cross, but I felt her want of
+sympathy for Thomas. But then she had never passed that closed door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+As a professional aunt must live somewhere, if only to simplify the
+delivery of telegrams, it is as well perhaps to explain where I live and
+why. The answer to the where, is London, and to the why, because it
+is the best place for all professionals to live in. Many were the
+suggestions that I should live in the country. Careful relatives and
+good housewives saw a chance of cheap and fresh eggs, cheap and large
+chickens, and cheap and freshly gathered vegetables, which showed, in
+the words of Dr. Johnson, a triumph of hope over experience, for I have
+always found that there are no eggs so dear as those laid by the hens of
+friends, no chickens so thin as those kept by relatives, no vegetables
+so expensive as those grown by acquaintances. But a professional aunt
+would of course be expected to make special terms, although her hens,
+like those of other people, would eat corn, and railways would charge
+just the same for carrying her goods, whether they were consigned to
+sisters-in-law or not, and the expense of the carriage is the reason
+invariably given why things are so dear when bought from friends.
+Friends, too, have a way of sending chickens with their feathers on,
+whereas the chickens one knows by sight, laid in rows in poulterers'
+shops, have no association with feathers. Don't you dislike the country
+friend who asks you to spend a night, and then tells you at breakfast
+that the pillow you slept on was filled with the feathers of departed
+hens known and loved by her?
+
+Then there was Nannie, and my living in London added a great importance
+to her position. She became at once chaperon, housekeeper, counselor,
+and friend. It was a great joy to her to think that she shielded me
+from the dangers of London; and she would willingly have fetched me
+from dinners and parties generally, and saw nothing incongruous in the
+announcement, "Miss Lisle's nurse is at the door."
+
+"Not that I should be at the door," said Nannie; "I never go anywhere
+but what I am asked inside and treated as such." Nannie still thinks of
+us as children, and will continue to do so, no doubt until she who has
+rocked so many babies to sleep shall herself be enfolded in the arms of
+Mother Earth--and tenderly bidden to sleep.
+
+Personally I had a leaning toward a flat, so many of my friends told me
+of the joys of shutting it up when one goes away, which, by the way, I
+find they never, or very rarely, do. But Nannie didn't hold with flats.
+It is curious what things people don't hold with. After reading of a
+terrible murder in a railway carriage, I cautioned my little housemaid,
+who was going home one Sunday, to be careful not to be thrown out of
+a window. She replied, "I don't hold with girls who are thrown out of
+windows."
+
+Well, Nannie didn't hold with flats. To please me and to show her
+open-mindedness, she went with me to look at flats, but there was a
+tactless integrity about her criticism. I discovered that she judged of
+everything from a nursery point of view; and when I ventured to suggest
+that, as there were no children, a nursery was not of very great
+importance, she said, "You never can tell." In this instance I felt I
+could most distinctly tell, and wondered whether I might too tell Nannie
+of something I didn't hold with. But I didn't. I remember once long ago
+one of us asking Nannie if any one could have children without being
+married, and Nannie answered in a very matter of fact voice, "They can,
+dear, but it's better not." Anyhow, she didn't hold with flats. "There's
+the porters for one thing," she said. That, of course, settled it, and
+we looked at small houses.
+
+"I suppose you will get married one of these days," she said, as we
+stood on a doorstep waiting to be let in.
+
+"Perhaps no one will have me," I said.
+
+"Well, they might; people marry you least expect to. Look at Maria
+Dewberry; you would never have--"
+
+The door opened, or we will presume so, as my knowledge of Maria's
+movements after her surprising marriage is nil.
+
+Looking over houses is not without excitement, and certainly not without
+surprises; but I was spared the experience some unknown person had who
+came one day to see our house when we all lived in London, but happened
+to be away. Having a house in the country, we very often did let the
+London house, which accounts for the agent's mistake.
+
+One day, just as Archie was going out, he found on the doorstep a
+charming lady with a very pretty daughter.
+
+"May we see over the house?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly," said Archie.
+
+He showed them all over the house, from cellar to garret. He says he
+initiated them into the mysteries of the dark cupboard, and he says he
+showed them everything of historic interest in the family. The daughter,
+he vows, was tremendously interested. When they had seen everything and
+Archie had brought them back to the hall, the charming mother said, "And
+when is the house to let?"
+
+"Oh! it's not to let," said Archie.
+
+He says he assured them it was no trouble at all, etc.!
+
+In every small house we went, Nannie trudged laboriously up to the
+top, and I heard her murmuring, "Night, day," as she went backward and
+forward, from one room to the other. At last we found a small house in
+Chelsea of which she thoroughly approved. She couldn't exonerate the
+agent from all blame in saying that there were views of the river from
+the window. "Not but what there might be if we, leaned out far enough,
+but we can't because of the bars." It was the very bars that had
+attracted her in the first instance, from the outside. Bars meant a
+nursery. Iron bars may not make a cage, but they undoubtedly make a
+nursery.
+
+She stood at the top window and looked out on the green trees, and a
+blackbird was obliging enough, at that very moment, to sing a love-song.
+Perhaps it was about nurseries, and Nannie understood it; at all events
+she decided there and then to take the house. "Of course," she said, "I
+know there's no nursery wanted, but I don't hold with houses that can't
+have nurseries in them, if they want to." That gave me an idea! It came
+like a flash. Nannie should have her nursery!
+
+Of course this all happened some years ago, when the home at Hames was
+broken up. With the help of Diana I managed it beautifully. It was kept
+a dead secret. Diana collected, or rather allowed me to collect, all the
+things Nannie had specially loved in the home nursery, which I am sure
+cost Diana a pang, as she was very anxious her children should abide by
+tradition and grow up among the things their father had loved as a boy;
+but she sent them all, even the rocking-horse, to me for my nursery.
+
+The walls I had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the
+old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was
+so old that any jumble sale would have been pleased to have it. The
+kettle-holder hung on the wall, with its cat on a green ground, which
+had been lovely in the day of its youth. One of us had worked it; Nannie
+of course knew which. The tea-set was there with its green, speckled
+ground.
+
+But while all this was being arranged, Nannie had a very bad time. It
+was not for long, certainly, but she said it was pretty bad while it
+lasted. To insure the complete secrecy of our nursery plan, we arranged
+that she should go to Hames while we were doing it all, never thinking
+of what she would feel on going into the Hames nursery and finding all
+her treasures gone, and finding another woman reigning in her place; for
+all through our grown-up years the nursery had been left for Nannie as
+it had been when we were children. The nurse in her place hurt most.
+
+"'Mrs.' here and 'Mrs.' there, certificated and teaching. It's all very
+well, but I'm not sure they don't go too far in this teaching business.
+No amount of teaching will--Well, it's there, so what's the use? I
+expect Eve knew how to handle Cain right enough."
+
+"He wasn't very well brought up, though, Nannie," I said.
+
+"Poor child!" said Nannie. "How do we know it wasn't Abel's fault? He
+may have been an aggravating child; some are born so, and I've seen a
+child, many a time, go on at another till he's almost worried him
+into a frenzy just saying, 'I see you,' over and over again, does
+it sometimes. Children will do it, of course; besides, there were no
+commandments then, and you can't expect children to do right without
+rules and regulations. That's all discipline is, rules and regulations,
+which is commandments, so to speak."
+
+"You think, then, Nannie," I said, "that Eve forgot to tell Cain not to
+kill Abel?"
+
+"Well," said Nannie, "Eve had a lot to do; we can't blame her. She must
+have had a lot to do. Think what a worry Adam must have been: he had no
+experience, no nothing; he couldn't be a help to a woman, brought up as
+he was, always thinking of himself as first, as of course he was! Now,
+there's Parker--he is a good husband: he rolls the beef on Sunday to
+save Mrs. Parker trouble, and prepares the vegetables; he is a good
+husband, no trouble in the house whatsoever. He never brings in dirt,
+Mrs. Parker says, wipes his feet ever so before he comes, on the finest
+day just the same."
+
+I thought the comparison a little hard on Adam, but still I didn't say
+so, and Nannie reverted to the modern nurse, after informing me that men
+and horses were sacred beasts!
+
+"Well, about nurses, 'Mrs.' before a nurse's name doesn't soothe a
+fretful child, nor make her more patient or loving. It might make her
+less patient, if she took to wishing the 'Mrs.' was real instead of
+sham; some women are like that, all for marrying. I dare say," said
+Nannie, when going over her experiences, "my face did look blank when I
+missed all my treasures, but f said nothing, although it was a blow when
+I thought of all the lovely times you had had with that rocking-horse.
+You remember the hole in it? Well, that was cut out solid because of all
+the things that were inside that rocking-horse; almost all the things
+that had been lost for years we found in that horse. My gold chain, for
+one thing, to say nothing of other things. The tail came out, and that
+is how the things got lost. The boys, always up to mischief, just popped
+anything they came across down that hole and put in the tail again, so
+no one knew anything about it. Well, then, your father lost something
+very special, I forget what, and there was a to-do! And Jane said she
+believed there was a power of things down that rocking-horse, so we got
+Jane's sister's young man, who was a carpenter, or by way of being,
+to come and cut out a square block out of the underneath--well, the
+stomach--of that horse--and then we found things! Things we had lost
+for years. Then we put the block back, and no one would have noticed
+particularly, not unless they had looked. Well, that's what I missed,
+the rocking-horse, but still I said nothing. Then we had tea out of new
+cups, and still I said nothing, because tea-cups will get broken, and
+you can't expect young girls to take care of cups like we did. The
+kettle-holder was gone! Then Mrs. David came in. Oh! she is lovely and
+like your mother in some ways,--the ways of going round and speaking
+to every one,--and she laid her hand on Betty's head, just as I've seen
+your mother do a hundred times on yours, and that was hard to bear.
+Anyhow, it's a good thing it wasn't some one else who got Hames. There
+'s that to be thankful for. It begins with 'Z,' you know."
+
+"Nannie!" I said.
+
+"Z for Zebra," said Nannie.
+
+When the new nursery was all ready, Nannie was sent for. A dozen times
+that day I ran up that narrow staircase, and in the morning I laid the
+tea to see how it would look, and it looked so pretty that I left it.
+At four o'clock the fire was lighted and the kettle was put on to boil.
+Nannie drove up in a four wheeler. I was in the hall to meet her.
+She lingered to look at everything. She went round and round the
+dining-room, up to the drawing-room, even into the spare room, but no
+word of nursery. "Which is my room?" she said.
+
+"It's upstairs," I said. "Won't you come and look at it?"
+
+"There's no hurry, is there, miss?"
+
+I could see it was the nursery floor she dreaded.
+
+"Well, there is rather a hurry, Nannie," I said. "I am so anxious to see
+if you like all the house."
+
+At last I got her upstairs. I threw open the nursery door. It was too
+sudden, no doubt. At the sight of the kettle, the rocking-horse, the
+tea-set, she burst into tears.
+
+"Dear, dear Nannie," I said, "it is your own nursery; it's all from
+Hames."
+
+She paused in her sobs. "The robin mug's wrong," she said, and she
+moved it to the opposite side of the table; "he always sat there." "He"
+applied to a little brother who had died, not to the mug.
+
+"It's a very small nursery, Nannie," I said apologetically.
+
+"Well, there are no children to make it untidy," she answered.
+
+So Nannie and I settled down in our nursery, and through the darkening
+of that first evening she talked to me of my mother. It seems to me very
+wonderful how one woman can so devotedly love the children of another,
+but was it not greatly for the love of that other woman that Nannie
+loved us so much? It is her figure, I know, that Nannie sees when she
+shuts her eyes and re-peoples the nursery in her dreams,--that lovely
+mother, the center of that nursery and home; that mother so quick to
+praise, so loath to blame, so ready to find good in everything, so
+tender to suffering, so pitiful to sin!
+
+"Tell me about her when she was quite young, Nannie," I said.
+
+And Nannie talked on, telling me the stories I knew by heart and loved
+so dearly; and then, I remember, she started up.
+
+"What is it, Nannie?" I asked.
+
+"I thought she was calling," she replied; "I often seem to hear her
+voice."
+
+Dear Nannie! I believe she is ready to answer that call at any moment,
+for all the love of her new nursery.
+
+That is how I came to live in London.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+Most people, I imagine, who live in London are asked by their relatives
+and friends who live in the country to shop for them. My post is often
+ nothing more upsetting than on a very hot summer's morning, or a wet
+winter's one, to find an envelope on my plate, or beside it, addressed
+in Cousin Anastasia's large handwriting. "Dearest," the letter inside
+it begins, "if" (heavily underlined) "you should be passing Paternoster
+Row, will you choose me a nice little prayer-book, without a cross
+on it, please; people tell me they are cheaper there than elsewhere,
+prayer-books, I mean, for Jane, who is going to be confirmed. She
+is such a nice clean girl. I do hope she will be as clean after her
+confirmation, but one never can tell. In any case I feel I ought to give
+her something, and a prayer-book, under the circumstances, seems the
+most suitable thing."
+
+Jane, I remember, is a kitchen-maid. Of course I never pass Paternoster
+Row, but that to a country cousin of Anastasia's mental caliber is not
+worth consideration. She has no knowledge of geography, London's or
+otherwise, and is doubtless one of those people who think New Zealand is
+another name for Australia.
+
+On another occasion she writes to say that Martha, the head housemaid,
+"such an excellent servant," (all heavily under lined), who has been
+with them seventeen years, is going to marry a nice, clean widower with
+six children. She must give her a nice present; "nice" is underlined
+several times. She has heard that in the Edgeware Road there are to be
+had, complete in case, for three-and-sixpence, excellent clocks. She
+doesn't know the name of the shop, but she believes it begins with "P,"
+and if I could look in as I pass, she would be most grateful. As will be
+guessed, Anastasia is a wealthy woman with no sense of humor. She knows
+she has none, and she says she doesn't know what rich people want it
+for. Of course for poor people it is an excellent thing, because it
+enables them to look at the bright side of things; but as Anastasia's
+things, life in particular, are bright on all sides, she doesn't need
+that particular sense.
+
+Then there is another country cousin she is so sweet and diffident about
+asking me to do anything, that I feel I ought willingly to look into
+every shop window in the Edgeware Road beginning with "P" or any other
+letter, however wet or hot the day! And I am not sure that I wouldn't!
+Her writing is as meek as Anastasia's is aggressive, and she never
+descends to the transparency of an underlined "if." She says, would I
+mind sending her a book, called so-and-so, by such and such an author,
+price so much? It is all plain sailing with Cousin Penelope. She knows
+just what she wants and where to get it; so much so that I sometimes
+wonder why she doesn't send straight to the shop. But country cousins
+never do that; for wherein would lie the use of London cousins, if they
+didn't shop for their country cousins? How would they occupy their time?
+She would like me please to get it at Bumpus's, because they are so
+very civil and they knew her dear father. I might mention his name if I
+thought fit! Now, I know quite well that it is impossible that any
+one at Bumpus's, be he ever so venerable, can ever have known Cousin
+Penelope's father. The name, being Smith, may no doubt be familiar. Of
+course Cousin Penelope would repay any expense I incurred. In fact she
+must insist on so doing.
+
+"Insist" seems too strong a word to apply to any power that Cousin
+Penelope could enforce. It would be something so gentle; persistent,
+perhaps, but insistent? Never! "I beg, I implore, I entreat," would all
+be suitable, but "I insist" does not suggest Cousin Penelope.
+
+Dear Cousin Penelope, we are told, had a love-story in her youth, the
+sadness of which ruined her life. It must have been a very beautiful
+thing, that sorrow, to have made her what she is. One feels that it
+must be a very wonderful love that is laid away in the wrappings of
+submission and tied with the ribbons of resignation. There is assuredly
+no bitterness about it, and I sometimes wonder if one's own sorrow
+which tears and tugs at one's heart will some day leave such a record
+of holiness and patience on one's face! I am afraid not. I look in the
+glass, but I see nothing in the reflection which in the least resembles
+Cousin Penelope, nor can I believe that time will do it, nor am I brave
+enough to wish it. I cannot yet pray for a peace like hers. People say
+time can do everything, but
+
+     "Time is
+       Too slow for those who wait,
+       Too swift for those who fear,
+       Too long for those who grieve,
+       Too short for those who rejoice,
+       But for those who love Time is
+                           Eternity."
+
+So it is written on a sun-dial I know, and when I have a sun-dial of my
+own, those words shall be written thereon.
+
+I think time lies heavily sometimes on Hugh's hands. He said one day,
+"The days pass by, Betty, and we don't grow up!"
+
+To return to booksellers. There is "Truslove and Hanson" in my more or
+less immediate neighborhood, who are civil to a degree, but they did
+not know Cousin Penelope's father, therefore they are not specially
+qualified to sell a book to his daughter! So to Bumpus I must go, and
+I love it. A bookshop is a joy to me; the feel of books, the smell of
+books, the look of books, I love! I even enjoy cutting the pages of a
+book, which I believe every one does not enjoy.
+
+Then there is another country cousin, Pauline. When her letter comes,
+I open it with mixed feelings, in which the feeling of fondness
+predominates. One can't help loving her. She never asks one to shop for
+her, but with her, which is perhaps an even greater test of friendship.
+On a particularly hot day, I remember, a letter came from Pauline which
+announced her immediate arrival. I was, waiting in the hall for her,
+ready to start, which is a stipulation she always makes, as she says
+it is such a pity to waste time. She greeted me in the same rather
+tempestuous manner that I am accustomed to at the hands of Betty and
+Hugh, and then she ran down the steps again to tell the cabman that he
+had a very nice horse, which she patted, and said, "Whoa, mare!"
+She always does that. She then asked the cabman how long he had been
+driving, whether it was difficult to drive at night, and whether it was
+true he could only see his horse's ears; and I think she asked if he had
+any children, but of that I am not quite sure. If she didn't, it was a
+lapse of memory on her part. Even the cab-runner interested her. Hadn't
+I noticed what a sad face he had?
+
+I said I hadn't noticed anything except that he was rather dirty.
+Pauline said, "Of course he is dirty; what would you be, if you ran
+after cabs all day?" I wondered.
+
+Talking of cab-runners, I told her of the children's party I went to
+with Cousin Penelope, who, very much afraid that she was late, said in
+her sweetest manner to a man who opened the cab-door for us, "Are we
+late?" And the man answered, "I really cannot say, madam; I have only
+just this moment arrived myself."
+
+He was in rags, which I did not tell her; the sponge cake would have
+stuck in her throat at tea if I had. But I gave him something for his
+ready wit, and wished for weeks afterwards that I had plunged into the
+darkness after him. "What a charming man!" said Cousin Penelope. But to
+return to Pauline.
+
+"What a glorious day we are going to have!" she said. "It is good of you
+to say I may stay the night, and if I go to a ball, you won't mind? I
+have brought a small box,--as you see."
+
+I did see, and to my mind its size bordered on indecency. I like a box
+to look sufficiently large to take all I think a woman ought to need
+for a night's stay. Pauline often assures me it does hold everything,
+squashed tight, of course. I say it must be squashed very tight, and
+she says it is. "That's the beauty of the present-day fashion of fluffy
+things: everything is so easily squashed, and yet you can't squash them;
+an accordion-pleated thing, for instance."
+
+To a man whose admiration for a woman is gauged by the amount of luggage
+she can travel without, Pauline would prove irresistible. I know one who
+prides himself on his packing, and who has a horror of much luggage. He
+was all packed ready to go to Scotland, when his wife asked him if he
+could lend her a collar-stud for her flannel shirts, and he said, "Yes,
+but you must carry it yourself, I'm full up!"
+
+To that man Pauline, I am sure, would be very attractive.
+
+When Pauline and I started off on our shopping expedition, she demurred
+at taking a hansom, although she loves driving in them; but she said
+'buses were so much more amusing. "People in 'buses say such funny
+things," she said, and so they do. The old lady in particular who, when
+the horse got his leg over the trace without hurting himself or any one
+else, got up and announced to the 'bus in general: "There, I always did
+say I hated horses and dogs," and sat down again. I loved her for that
+and for other things too, among them her apple-cheeks and poke bonnet.
+
+Another reason why I insisted upon a hansom is that Pauline is not to be
+trusted in a 'bus; her interest in her fellow-creatures is embarrassing.
+I have, moreover, sat opposite babies in 'buses with Pauline, and where
+a baby is concerned, she has no self-control. So I was firm, and we
+started off in a hansom. I was continually besought to look at some
+delicious baby, first this side, then that.
+
+Pauline calmly avers that she would go mad if she lived in London. She
+couldn't stand seeing so many beautiful children, or babies, beautiful
+or otherwise. It is curious how babies in perambulators hold out their
+hands to Pauline as she passes, and laugh and gurgle at her.
+
+Once in Piccadilly, beautiful babies became less plentiful, and Pauline
+turned her thoughts and sympathies to horses and bearing-reins. She was
+instantly plunged into the depths of despair. Couldn't I do something,
+she asked, to remedy such a crying evil? She said it was the duty of
+every woman in London--Something in the catalogue she was carrying
+arrested her attention, and what it was the duty of every woman to do I
+am not sure. I did not ask, but was grateful for the peace which ensued.
+
+Pauline was glad the sales were on. She loved them, and yet she didn't
+like them, because she didn't think they brought out the best side of a
+woman's character. "I think," she said, "a woman's behavior at sales is
+a test, don't you?"
+
+I said I thought her behavior as regarded swing-doors was a surer one.
+She said she hadn't thought of that.
+
+"But I know what you mean; I do dislike the flouncing, pushing woman. I
+think every one should be taught to be courteous and gentle, don't you?"
+She added, "I hate being pushed."
+
+I told her of a woman next me in a 'bus one day, who said, "You're
+a-sittin' on me!" How I rose and politely begged her pardon, whereupon
+she said, "Now you're a-standin' on me!" And we agreed that there is no
+pleasing some people.
+
+Pauline returned to the perusal of the catalogue, in which she had put
+a large cross against the picture of a coat and skirt. She said she was
+stock-size. She didn't suppose any really smart women were. "Or would
+own to it," I suggested, but she didn't answer; she never does if she
+detects any savor of malice in a remark. She was very anxious I should
+admire the illustration. I did, but I felt it my duty as a London cousin
+to a country cousin to tell her that the illustration might lead her
+to expect too much. She warmly agreed that of course as regarded the
+figure, etc., the illustration was misleading, because she, of course,
+could never look so beautifully willowy as that. She was inclined to
+come out where the illustration went in, and she could never be so
+slanty, never; but apart from that, of course the coat and skirt would
+be exactly as it was pictured. Her figure would be to blame, of course.
+Her figure happens to be a very pretty one, but she didn't give me
+time to say so. I repeated that I should not put implicit faith in the
+illustration. She was a little hurt. She did not think it right to cast
+aspersions on the character of so respectable a firm as that whose name
+headed the catalogue. I said I didn't see it quite in the same light.
+Pauline looked at me reproachfully, and said drawing a lie was as bad as
+telling one.
+
+The argument was beyond me; besides, I like Pauline to look
+reproachfully at me, she is so pretty. Being as pretty as she
+undoubtedly is, I often wonder why she is not more effective.
+
+The right kind of country beauty is very convincing to the jaded
+Londoner; but to convince, one must be convinced, and that is exactly
+what Pauline is not. She never thinks whether she is beautiful or not,
+and I am sure it often lies with the woman herself, how beautiful people
+think her, except in the rare cases of real beauty, when there can
+be but one opinion. But in the case of ordinary beauty, the woman is
+appraised at her own value. Then there is the art of putting on clothes,
+of which Pauline is absolutely ignorant. There is even a studied
+untidiness which passes under the name of picturesque. All of this is
+a closed book to Pauline, and, after all, she is a delightful creature;
+but the trouble to me was that, at the time she came up to shop with me,
+she didn't wear good boots, and to do that I hold is part, or should be
+part, of a woman's creed. She gets her boots from the village shoemaker
+because his wife died. Her eyes filled with tears at the mere thought of
+the man, and she told me she thought it right to encourage local talent.
+In the boots I saw evidences of locality,--bumps, for instance,--but not
+of talent. Pauline was very indignant and said she had no bumps on her
+feet. "But you see my position?" I did, but I persuaded her to have some
+good boots made in London. This she consented to do, rather unwillingly
+and on the distinct understanding that in the country she should
+continue to encourage local talent. "On wet days," I ventured.
+
+And at flower-shows, she added.
+
+I have seen Pauline in the country, against a background of golden beech
+trees and brown bracken, look even beautiful; but in London she lacks
+something, possibly the right background. She has glorious hair, but her
+maid can't do it. Pauline admits it, but she says she can't send a nice
+woman away on that account; besides, she suffers from rheumatism, and
+Pauline's particular part of the country suits her better than any
+other.
+
+"Couldn't she learn?" I suggested.
+
+"No, she can't," said Pauline. "She had lessons once, and she came back
+and did my hair like treacle, all over my head,--no idea, absolutely. I
+should never look like you, whatever I did."
+
+"My dear Pauline," I said, "what nonsense!"
+
+"It's not nonsense. Father was saying only the other day that you are a
+beautiful creature, only no one seems to see it."
+
+"Dear Uncle Jim," I said; "how delightful, and how like him!"
+
+"But it's true you are beautiful; only the part about the people
+not seeing it isn't true: that's father's way of putting it. You are
+beautiful!"
+
+"My dear child!"
+
+"Why do you say 'dear child' to me? People would think you were years
+and years older than I am. Why do you always talk as if life were over?
+Have you a secret sorrow?"
+
+If Pauline, warm-hearted, loving Pauline had really thought I had, she
+would have been the last person to ask such a question.
+
+"Do I look it?" I asked.
+
+"No-o. Only when people seem to spend the whole of their life in doing
+things for other people, it makes one suspect that they are saying
+to themselves, 'As we can't be happy ourselves, we can see that other
+people are.'"
+
+"What a philosopher you are, Pauline! If you go on that supposition, you
+must have a terrible sorrow somewhere hidden behind that happy face of
+yours."
+
+Pauline is not meant to live in London. She thanks people in a crowd for
+letting her pass. If she is pushed off the pavement, she is only sorry
+that the person can be so rude as to do it. She never gets into a 'bus
+or takes any vehicular advantage over a widow, and she feels choky if
+she sees any one very old. "Do you know why?" she asked. "Because they
+are, so near Heaven, and sometimes I think you see the reflection of it
+in their faces."
+
+"Like Cousin Penelope," I said.
+
+We arrived at the shop where the coat and skirt were to be had, and
+Pauline, having admired the horse and thanked the cabman, and the
+commissionaire, who held his arm over a perfectly dry wheel, followed me
+into the shop. She admired everything as she went through the different
+departments, and apologized to the shop walkers for not being able to
+buy everything; but she lived in the country, and although the things
+were lovely, they would be no use to her--dogs on her lap most of the
+day, and so on.
+
+Everyone looked at Pauline; and old ladies, to whom she always appeals
+very much, put their heads on one side, as old ladies do when they
+admire anything very much, anything which reminds them of their own
+youth, and smiled. Old ladies have this privilege, that when they arrive
+at a certain age, they are allowed to think they were beautiful in their
+youth, and to tell you so. It is a recognized thing, and one of the
+recompenses of old age. We all know that every one had a beautiful
+grandmother--one at least; and if a portrait of one grandmother belies
+the fact, then there is the other one to fall back upon, of whom,
+unfortunately, no portrait exists, and she was abs--so--lute--lee
+lovely!
+
+The coat and skirt were found and eagerly compared with the
+illustration, and Pauline turned to me and said with a triumphant
+ringing her voice: "It wasn't an exaggeration. I knew it wouldn't be.
+Mother has dealt here for years."
+
+Then we went upstairs to try it on. In a few minutes Pauline had
+discovered that the fitter was supporting her deceased sister's husband
+and six children, the eldest of whom wasn't quite right and the youngest
+had rickets. She was so distressed that she didn't want the back of her
+coat altered, the woman already had so much to bear. But I prevailed
+upon her to have the alteration made regardless of the woman's domestic
+anxieties. I felt sure it would make no difference. But I cannot help
+feeling that Pauline's visit to that shop did make a difference to that
+poor woman, if only for a few moments in her life. And I think those
+children's lives were made happier too; but it is difficult to get
+Pauline to talk of these things.
+
+Then we went to the shoemaker, and Pauline told him all about the
+widower bootmaker, and of her scruples about having boots made by any
+one else. The bootmaker evidently thought that a foot like Pauline's was
+worthy of a good boot and Pauline said there were occasions on which one
+had to sink one's own feelings. She was scandalized at London prices,
+and told the man so. "But of course it means higher pay for the men, so
+it's all right."
+
+On our way home I said to Pauline that I couldn't understand why she was
+so economical--ready-made coats and skirts, and afraid of paying a fair
+price for good boots! Was her allowance smaller than it used to be? She
+got pink and didn't answer. I determined she should, and at last she
+did.
+
+"Well, you see, I pay a woman to come and wash the shoemaker's children
+on Saturday evenings."
+
+I smiled. "That can't cost much, unless she provides the soap."
+
+Pauline got pinker still. "Well, I pay for the village nurse, and a few
+other little things. Then there's a little baby," she dropped her voice,
+"who has no mother--she died--and who never had a father, and every one
+doesn't care for those sort of babies.--You do like my coat and skirt,
+don't you?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+I think, by the way, that it was on that very day that Mr. Dudley met
+Pauline. She, of course, would know the exact date and hour, but I am
+almost sure of it, for although it may mean a day of less ecstatic
+joy to me than it does to her, it brought much peace and subsequent
+happiness into my life, and therefore is writ in red letters in my book
+of days. For the visits of Dick Dudley had latterly become more frequent
+than I cared for, and much as I liked him, I began to wish that I
+had remained in his estimation under the shadow of Diana's charming
+personality, for so he had tolerated me until the fateful day on which I
+had partaken of Betty's gray wad. That act of professional valor ignited
+a spark of feeling for me in his breast, which, fostered by Hugh's
+constant suggestion, sprang into something warmer than I could have
+wished, and was fanned into flame on the day on which he found me paying
+a visit of consolation to the small fat Thomas. Now, strangely enough,
+that small fat person was nephew to Dick Dudley. How small the world is!
+And the mother turned out to have been exactly the sort of mother I had
+thought she must be. One of the nicest things about Dick Dudley was the
+way he spoke of that sister, and we had long talks about her, until I
+awoke to the fact that that sister and I must have been twins, so alike
+were we; then I began to be afraid. For I couldn't tell him that there
+was some one far away, for whom I was waiting from day to day. One
+can hardly barricade one's self behind such an announcement. The
+classification of women is incomplete. There are those who are engaged
+and who care; there are those who are engaged and who don't care; there
+are those who don't care and, who are not engaged; then there are those
+who care and who are not engaged, so cannot say. It is not their
+fault if, sometimes, they wound a passing lover. Mercifully there are
+Pauline's in this world to relieve one of unsought affections, and I
+liked Dick Dudley well enough, and not too much to be glad when I saw
+him give ever such a small start when he walked into my drawing-room and
+saw Pauline sitting there, clothed in cool green linen and looking her
+very best. I had done her glorious hair on the top--that, I think is
+the expression--and she sat in the window so that her hair shone like
+burnished gold, and she was saying in a voice fraught with emotion,
+"If I had my way, there should be no sorrow or suffering," which of all
+sentiments was the most likely to appeal to Dick Dudley, for he is one
+of those who look upon sorrow and suffering as bad management on the
+part of some one, since the world is really such an awfully jolly place,
+if only people didn't make a muddle of their lives. He says it is all
+very well to talk of high ideals, you can't live up to them, the best
+you can do is to live up to the highest practical ideal. But then his
+standard of ideal is very much higher since he saw Pauline for the first
+time. Pauline blushed when a strange man walked into the room, which was
+all for the best, and made the day a happier one for me. Not that Dick
+Dudley was not very loyal to me. He tried, I could see it was an effort
+not to talk too much to Pauline, although the topic of bearing-reins,
+under certain circumstances, was a very engrossing one, and spaniels a
+never-ending one. Pauline expressed her surprise that Mr. Dudley should
+ask her if she lived in London.
+
+"I thought every one could see I lived in the country," she said. "Did
+you mean it for a compliment?" she asked kindly.
+
+Dick Dudley was a little overcome by this, and he said he would hardly
+have dared to pay her a compliment, since every one knew that girls who
+lived in the country away from bearing-reins and other hardening and
+worldly influences, and in close proximity to spaniels, black, liver and
+white, cocker, clumber, and otherwise, were so vastly superior to their
+London sisters. Here Dick got a little deep and Pauline kindly rescued
+him.
+
+"A compliment to my clothes, I meant," she said; "because all my friends
+in London tell me my clothes are so countrified."
+
+Dick listened very, very seriously to the reasons why Pauline was
+obliged to have most of her clothes made in the country, and I could see
+that every moment he thought less of the importance of clothes and
+their makers, and more and more of the qualities essential in woman,
+simplicity, goodness, frankness, and an absence of artificiality. I saw
+it all on his face, dawning slowly and surely. By the time we had had
+tea, I could see it was a matter of mutual satisfaction to both Dick and
+Pauline to find that they were going to the same dance that night. The
+responsibility of chaperoning Pauline was not mine.
+
+My anxiety as to the ball dress emerging from the small box was relieved
+by Pauline telling me that it was to come from the dressmaker just
+in time for her to dress for the ball; which it did. She came to be
+inspected by Nannie and me before she started, and she really looked
+delicious. Her assets as a country girl counted heavily that night, she
+looked so fresh, so natural, and so full of the joy of living. Her hair
+counted, every hair of it. Nannie was so touched that she wept aloud and
+said it was what I ought to be doing. But I told her professional
+aunts went only to children's parties, where they could be of some use.
+Pauline wished I was going. "Betty," she said and paused, "I am sure Mr.
+---- is his name Dudley? feels very much your not going." I laughed,
+and marked it down against her that she should have said, "Is his name
+Dudley?" It was the first evidence of feminine guile I had detected in
+her. Men are answerable for a very great deal.
+
+I woke to greet Pauline when she came into my sunlit room at five
+o'clock in the morning, looking still fresh, untired, and more than ever
+full of the joy of living. "Oh, it was lovely," she said, sitting down
+on my bed.
+
+"Who saw you home?" I asked professionally.
+
+"Oh, Aunt Adela to the very door; she even waited till I shut it."
+
+"Who did you dance with?" I asked.
+
+"Heaps and heaps of people. I was lucky; all Thorpshire seemed to be
+there; and then Mr. Dudley. Betty, I understand now."
+
+"What?" I said, alarmed by the note of tragic kindness in her voice.
+
+"About Mr. Dudley, he talked about you so beautifully. He agrees with
+me absolutely about your character, and he told me about his sister."
+Pauline's voice became hushed.
+
+"Did he say she was just a little like you, Pauline?"
+
+"Yes, he did. You knew her, then? He said I reminded him of her so
+strangely. I think he would make a woman very happy. I do really."
+
+"So do I, dear Pauline, really."
+
+"Then won't you?"
+
+"No, darling goose."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I am not the woman. Go to bed, Pauline."
+
+She went--to sleep? I cannot say. I forget whether a girl goes to sleep
+the first night after she has fallen in love. Night? I suppose I should
+say morning. But it depends on the hour when she takes the first step
+into that bewildering fairyland of first love. For a fairyland it
+assuredly is, if she is lucky enough to find the right guide. He must,
+to begin with, believe in the fairyland. He must know that the path may
+be rough at times, stony and overgrown with weeds, but he will know that
+all the difficulties will be worth while when he brings her out into the
+open, and they look away to the limitless horizon of happiness.
+
+A few hours later, Pauline said to me at breakfast, "Betty, I think I
+shall tell that bootmaker to make me two pairs of boots and two pairs
+of shoes. It is better to have enough while one is about it, don't you
+think so?"
+
+So began the regeneration of Pauline, regeneration in the matter of
+footgear, I mean, and to wear good boots did her character no harm, nor
+the pocket of the country shoemaker either, I am sure. Good boots could
+not turn her feet from the pathway of truth and goodness which from her
+earliest childhood she had set out to tread, never pausing except to
+pick up some one who lagged behind, or to help some one who had strayed
+from the path.
+
+Dick Dudley, whose pathway through life had zigzagged considerably, was
+astonished to find how easy the pathway was to keep, guided by Pauline,
+and how alluring the goal of goodness. He gave himself up gladly to her
+guidance, and was touched to find how much there was of latent goodness
+in him. He had never before realized, that was all, how much he loved
+his fellow-creatures, how he longed to help them all, how the conditions
+of the laboring-classes made his blood boil with indignation, how he
+idolized babies, loved old women, reverenced old men.
+
+It was all a revelation to him. It was, moreover, delightful to be told
+by Pauline how wonderful she found all these things in him, and how
+unexpected. This, she explained, was nothing personal. "But I often
+wondered if I should ever meet a man like you."
+
+"Darling," he answered humbly, "I don't think I am that sort of man;
+really, I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary."
+
+Then Pauline, to prove the contrary, would ask him if he didn't feel
+this or that or the other? And of course he could truthfully say he did,
+because he felt all and everything Pauline wished him to feel, with her
+beautiful eyes fixed upon him and the flush of enthusiasm on her
+cheeks. Here was something to inspire a man, this splendidly generous,
+magnanimous creature. Of course he had always felt all these things; he
+had been groping after goodness. It was the goodness in Diana, and he
+was kind enough to say in the professional aunt, which had appealed to
+him. He had been feeling after, it for years, but it was only Pauline
+who had revealed it to him, in himself. Well, he was very much in love.
+Most men engaged to charming girls feel their own unworthiness, and
+the girl is sweetly content that they should do so. Not so Pauline. She
+revealed to her astonished lover a depth of goodness in his character
+that he had least suspected, and he gradually began to feel how little
+he had been understood.
+
+Now this is an excellent basis on which to start an engagement. I forget
+exactly how and when they became engaged, but it was certainly before
+Dick said humbly, "Darling, I don't think I am that sort of man; really,
+I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary," because, with all Pauline's
+kindness to sinners, there was none hardened enough to address her as
+"darling" without being first engaged to her; so by that I know they
+were engaged that evening at the opera, because it was in a Wagnerian
+pause that Dick said those words, in a loud voice from the back of the
+box. How else should a professional aunt know these things?
+
+Between meeting Dick and becoming engaged to him, Pauline went home and
+came back with a larger box and stayed quite a long time, as time goes,
+although, as a time in which to become engaged, it was very short, and
+Nannie, feeling this, asked Pauline if she knew much about Mr. Dudley,
+and was she wise? In spite of this anxiety on Nannie's part, she enjoyed
+it all immensely, and wept to her heart's content when the engagement
+was announced. Now Dick Dudley was a rich young man, and I wondered
+whether other people wept too from motives less pure and simple than
+Nannie's.
+
+Pauline wanted me to join a society called "The Deaf Dog Society." The
+obligation enforced on members was that they should kneel down, put
+their arms round the neck of any deaf dog they should chance to meet,
+and say, "Darling, I love you."
+
+"You see," she said, "a deaf dog doesn't know he is deaf, he only
+wonders why no one ever speaks to him, why no one ever calls him. So you
+see what a splendid society it is, and there is no subscription."
+
+Dick made a stipulation that the benefits of the society should be
+conferred on dogs only. He made a point of that.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+As there was nothing to wait for, happy people, it was agreed by all
+parties that the wedding should take place in August, which kept me
+rather late in town; it was hardly worth going away, to come back again,
+as back again I had to come, as Betty and Hugh were coming to stay
+with me for a night on their way to Thorpshire. It is not astonishing,
+perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a
+nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is
+astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people
+who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from
+one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of
+an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in
+something that is not a real bed. We all remember that joy. Except for
+that one child, it is an every-day thing and fraught with no particular
+excitement. The servants, for instance, in a house where children are
+an every-day thing, remain quite calm, if good tempered, when a visiting
+child is expected, and the kitchen-maid, no doubt, cleans the doorstep
+as usual, and, no doubt, takes in the milk. But this I know, that if I
+had happened to possess such a thing when Betty and Hugh were coming
+to stay, my doorstep would never have been cleaned. For once I was
+glad that I depended on the services of a very small boy, who thinks
+he cleans it. Staid and level-headed as were my maids, they answered no
+bells that morning, which was perhaps natural, as I believe none ring
+up to the nursery. Of course they had to be interested in Nannie's
+arrangements.
+
+It was a hot August day, I remember, and I sat at the window writing, or
+pretending to write. As a matter of fact, I was listening. Among other
+things to the "Austrian Anthem," played over and over again, first right
+hand, then left, then both, but not together, by, I guessed, a child
+about ten years old, next door.
+
+Poor, hot child, how I pitied her.
+
+"Never mind," I thought, "take courage, seaside time is coming. Within
+a few days, no doubt, an omnibus will come to the door empty, to go away
+full, filled with luggage, crowned by a perambulator and a baby's bath!"
+It is only a woman who can travel with a perambulator and a bath; they
+are the epitome of motherhood. A father is always too busy to go by that
+particular train.
+
+I heard the twitter of sparrows, the jingle of bells, the hooting of a
+siren, or was it my neighbor singing "A rose I gave to you"? of course
+it was,--the rumble of a post-office van, and the cry of children's
+voices, rather peevish voices, poor mites! Never mind, seaside time is
+coming.
+
+Listening more intently, I beard in the far distance, yet distinct, the
+cries of the children who ought to go to the seaside, children who have
+never been to the seaside, never paddled, never built castles, never
+caught crabs, never seen sea-anemones or starfish, children whose faces
+are wan and whose mothers are too tired to be kind to them. It is often
+that, I am sure, too tired to be kind!
+
+Listening again, I heard faintly--it is not with the ears that one hears
+these things--the unuttered complaints of those tired mothers, worn-out
+women, despairing men, and the singing, in dark alleys and in hot areas,
+of caged birds. There are thousands of caged creatures, other than
+birds, in London in August, men, women, and children. Hats off, then,
+to the little feathered Christians who sing for their fellow-prisoners
+a paean of praise. It is perhaps easier to sing to the patch of blue sky
+when you do not know that it will be hidden behind clouds tomorrow.
+
+"They've come," cried Nannie.
+
+"O Aunt Woggles!" said Hugh, "I've brought you a lovely caterpillar
+wrapped up in grass."
+
+"And I've brought you one of my very own bantam eggs," said Betty. "I've
+kept it ever so long for you."
+
+Then it will be bad, said Hugh.
+
+"Oh, not so long as to be bad," said Betty. "You will eat it, won't you,
+Aunt Woggles?"
+
+Nannie was radiantly happy at tea that day, but I think her happiness
+was supreme when she fetched me later to look at the children asleep.
+We stole into Betty's room together, and Nannie shaded the candle as
+she held it, for me to look at what is assuredly the loveliest thing on
+God's earth--a sleeping child.
+
+Nannie, in an eloquent silence, pointed to the chair on which lay
+Betty's clean clothes, folded ready for the morning, and to her hairy
+horse which she had brought for company. Her blue slippers were beside
+the bed. Then we went into Hugh's room. He, too, lay peaceful and
+beautiful, his clothes folded ready for the morning, and his pistol
+beside him in case he was "attacked." His slippers were red, and Nannie,
+at the sight of them, cried quietly. To some happy mothers a child's
+slippers mean nothing more than size two or three, and serve only to
+remind her how quickly children grow out of things!
+
+But to Nannie they brought back memories of years of happiness, through
+which little feet, in just the same sort of slippers, had pattered,
+stumbling here, falling there, picked up, and guided by her. But she
+thought most of the little feet in just that sort of slippers, that had
+stopped still forever early on their life's journey. It is the voices
+that are hushed that call most distinctly, the footsteps that stop that
+are most carefully traced. It is the children who have gone that stand
+and beckon!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+Pauline's wedding-day dawned gloriously bright and beautiful. The whole
+village was up and doing, very early, putting the finishing touches to
+the decorations.
+
+The widower shoemaker and his children, and the woman who washed
+them--the children, I mean--on Saturdays, had all combined to erect a
+triumphal arch of, great splendor, and the woman showed such sensibility
+in the choice of mottoes, and such a nice appreciation of the joys of
+matrimony, together with a decided leaning towards the bridegroom's
+side of the arch, that the shoemaker suggested that she should suit her
+actions to her words--that was how he expressed it--and marry him, which
+she agreed to do. But she afterwards explained, in breaking the news to
+her friends, that they could have knocked her down with a leaf! Whether
+this was due to the weakened state of her heart, or to her precarious
+position on the ladder, I do not know.
+
+Everybody and everything was in a bustle, with the exception of Aunt
+Cecilia, who sat through it all as calm and as beautiful as ever. Not
+that she did not feel parting with Pauline, but her love for everybody
+and everything was of a nature so purely unselfish that it never
+occurred to her to count the cost to herself.
+
+I have never met any one who so completely combines in her character
+gentleness and strength as does Aunt Cecilia: so gentle in spirit and
+judgment, and so strong in her fight for principles and beliefs. If she
+has a weakness, and I could never wish any one I love to be without one,
+it lies in her love for Patience. She does not think it right to play in
+the morning, but sometimes, being unable to withstand the temptation of
+so doing, she plays it in an empty drawer of her writing-table, and if
+she hears any one coming, she can close the drawer!
+
+Her greatest interest in life, next to her husband and children, is her
+garden and other people's gardens. In fact, she looks at life generally
+from a gardening point of view, and is apt to regard men as gardeners,
+possible gardeners, or gardeners wasted. As gardeners they have their
+very distinct use, and as such deserve every consideration, but if a
+man will not till the soil, he is a cumberer thereof. She, at least,
+inclines that way in thought. Life, she says, is a garden, children the
+flowers, parents the gardeners. "If we treated children as we do roses,
+they would be far happier. We don't call roses naughty when they grow
+badly and refuse to flower as they ought to; we blame the gardeners or
+the soil."
+
+"But, Aunt Cecilia," I say, "one can recommend an unsatisfactory
+gardener to a friend, but one can't so dispose of unsatisfactory
+parents."
+
+"You must educate them, dear."
+
+Now all this sounds very convincing when said by Aunt Cecilia, because,
+for one thing, she says it very charmingly, and for another, she is
+still a very beautiful woman. She is too fond, perhaps, of extinguishing
+her beauty under a large mushroom hat, and is given to bending too much
+over herbaceous borders, and so hiding her beautiful face. But I dare
+say the flowers love to look at it, and to see mirrored in it their own
+loveliness.
+
+Aunt Cecilia wears a bonnet sometimes, and thereby hangs a tale. So few
+aunts wear a bonnet nowadays that the fact of one doing so is almost
+worth chronicling. She doesn't wear it very often, only at the
+christenings of the head gardener's babies. From a christening point of
+view that is very often, but from a bonnet point of view I suppose it
+might be called seldom--once a year? I know that bonnet well, because it
+has been sent to me often for renovation. On one particular occasion
+it arrived in a cardboard box. On the top of the bonnet was a bunch of
+flowers, beautiful enough to make any bonnet accompanying it welcome, in
+whatever state of dilapidation. Aunt Cecilia has a knack of sending
+just the right sort of flowers, and they always bring a message, which
+everybody's flowers don't do.
+
+The bonnet I renovated to the best of my ability and sent it back. In
+the course of a few days I received a slightly agitated note from Aunt
+Cecilia. "It doesn't suit me, dearest, and after all the trouble you
+have taken!"
+
+Knowing Aunt Cecilia, I wrote back, "Did you try it on in bed with your
+hair down?"
+
+She answered by return, "Dearest, I did! It really suits me very well
+now that I have tried it on in my right mind. I am going to wear it
+at the last little Shrub's christening, this afternoon. It is just in
+time."
+
+When David and Diana were singled out by night for the particular
+attention of a burglar, Aunt Cecilia wrote to sympathize and said, "I am
+so thankful, dearest, David did not meet the poor, misguided man!"
+
+May we all be judged as tenderly!
+
+This is a digression, but it perhaps explains Pauline and Pauline's
+wedding, and the joy with which all the people in the village entered
+into it.
+
+The strangest people kept on arriving the morning of the wedding. It was
+verily a gathering of the halt, the lame, and the blind--all friends of
+Pauline's. Whenever Uncle Jim was particularly overcome, it was sure to
+mean that some old soldier, officer or otherwise, had turned up, who had
+served with him in some part of the world, long before Pauline was born.
+Aunt Cecilia welcomed them all in her inimitable manner, which made each
+one feel that he was the one and most particularly honored guest. For
+all her apparent absent-mindedness, she knew exactly who belonged to
+Mrs. Bunce's department and who not.
+
+Mrs. Bunce, the old housekeeper, was very busy, every button doing its
+duty! A wedding didn't come her way every day. The sisters-in-law, of
+course, came with their belongings.
+
+Zerlina was distressed at the nature of many of the presents; and
+wondered if Pauline would have enough spare rooms to put them in; which
+showed how little she knew her. If Pauline had told her that she valued
+the alabaster greyhound under a glass case, subscribed for by the
+old men and women in the village, over seventy, Zerlina wouldn't have
+believed her any more than did old Mrs. Barker when Diana told her Sara
+was named after a dear old housemaid and not after the Duchess.
+
+Betty and Hugh were among the bridesmaids and pages, and Hugh shocked
+Betty very much by saying, in the middle of the service "When may I play
+with my girl?"
+
+Some one described Uncle Jim as looking like one of the Apostles, and
+Aunt Cecilia certainly looked like a saint. Ought I, by the way, to
+bracket an apostle and a saint? But nothing was so wonderful or so
+beautiful as the expression on Pauline's face. I am sure that, as she
+walked up the aisle, she was oblivious to everything and every one
+except God and Dick.
+
+It is assuredly a great responsibility for a man to accept such a love
+as hers.
+
+A wedding is nearly always a choky thing, and Pauline's was particularly
+so. As she left the church, she stopped in the churchyard to speak to
+her friends, and for one old woman she waited to let her feel her dress.
+
+"Is it my jewels you want to feel, Anne?" she said, as the old hands
+tremblingly passed over her bodice. "I have on no jewels."
+
+The old hands went up to Pauline's face and gently and reverently
+touched it. "God bless her happy face," said the old woman. "I had to
+know for sure." Pauline kissed the old fingers gently. We all knew for
+sure, but then we had eyes to see.
+
+Pauline went away in the afternoon, and the villagers danced far into
+the evening, and there was revelry in the park by night.
+
+After Pauline and Dick had gone away, I walked across the park to
+the post office to send a telegram to Julia, who was kept at home by
+illness, to her very great disappointment. There is nothing she adores
+like a wedding. I was glad to escape for a few minutes. I wrote out the
+telegram and handed it to the postmaster, who, reading it, said, I'm
+glad it went off so well. "There's nobody what wouldn't wish her well."
+Then he counted the words. "Julia Westby?" he said. "Um-um-um-um.
+Eleven, miss. You might as well give her the title." I laughed and
+added, or rather he added, the "Lady."
+
+Julia is not a sister-in-law really, but she likes to call herself so,
+since she might have been one, having been for one ecstatic week in
+Archie's life engaged to him. She is wont now to lay her hand on his
+head, in public, for choice, and say, "He was almost mine." She says
+she still loves him as a friend. "But, you see, dearest Betty, there is
+everything that is delightful in the relationship of a poor friend, but
+a poor husband! That is another thing. To begin with, it is not fair
+to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his
+character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense,
+whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so
+delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands
+are not supposed to be."
+
+Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby
+that night, a darling little baby!
+
+And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be
+too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day."
+
+Then Hugh suggested the glorious possibility of the angels bringing
+it to Fullfield, whereupon Hyacinth said that was not at all likely,
+because she knew that when a baby was born, it was usual for one or
+other parent to be present!
+
+We stayed for a few days at Fullfield, and Hugh and Betty enjoyed
+themselves immensely. Hyacinth said it was just like staying for a week
+at the pantomime, and Betty said, with a deep sigh, that it was much
+nicer, a billion times nicer.
+
+Pauline's brother Jack most nearly resembled any one in a pantomime, and
+the children loved him. One day at lunch he went to the side-table to
+fetch a potato in its jacket, and coming back he laid it on Uncle Jim's
+slightly bald head and said, "Am I feverish, father?"
+
+"It Good Heavens, my boy!" exclaimed Uncle Jim; "you must be in an awful
+state!"
+
+After that, the eyes of the children never left Jack during any meal
+at which they happened to be present, and whenever he got up to fetch
+anything, Hugh began dancing with joy and saying in a loud whisper,
+"He's going to do something funny"; and if Jack remained silent, Hugh
+was sure he was thinking of something to do. It is difficult to live up
+to those expectations.
+
+One morning at breakfast Hugh said suddenly, "Aunt Woggles, have you got
+a mole?"
+
+I said I believed I had.
+
+"It's frightfully lucky. I have," he said, pulling up his sleeve and
+disclosing a mole on his very white little arm. "It is lucky."
+
+"I've got one too," said Betty, diving under the table.
+
+"All right, darling," I said, "you needn't show us."
+
+"I couldn't, Aunt Woggles, at least not now. If you come to see me in my
+bath, you can; but it's truthfully there."
+
+I said I was sure it was.
+
+"I 'spect she's sitting on it," said Hugh in aloud whisper; "that's
+why."
+
+"We asked Mr. Hardy once if he had a mole, and he got redder and
+redder;" we asked him at lunch, said Betty.
+
+"He got redder and redder," said Hugh, by way of corroboration. "Mother
+said moles weren't good things to ask people about, so we asked him if
+he had any little children, and he hadn't; then we didn't know what to
+ask."
+
+"We only asked about moles because we wanted him to be lucky," said
+kindhearted Betty.
+
+"Last time I went to the Zoo," said Hugh, "I gave all my bread to one
+animal. He was a lucky animal, wasn't he?"
+
+"It was the hippopotamus, I think; he was lucky."
+
+"Perhaps he has a mole, Hugh," I said.
+
+We'll look, said Hugh. "I 'spect he has."
+
+The proverbial difficulty of finding a needle in a haystack seemed
+child's play compared to that of finding a mole on a hippopotamus.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+Another aunt, Anna by name, suggested that as I was at Fullfield, I
+might take the opportunity of paying her a visit at Manwell, why because
+I was at Fullfield I don't know, as they are miles apart, counties apart
+I should say. However, I went because it is difficult to refuse Aunt
+Anna anything; she accepts no excuses. It is as well for any one who
+wishes to see Aunt Anna at her best to see her in her own home. She,
+according to Aunt Cecilia, does best in her own soil. Moreover, she is
+nothing without her family, it so thoroughly justifies her existence.
+
+Aunt Anna is one of those jewels who owe a certain amount to their
+setting.
+
+Her husband calls her a jewel, and as such she is known by the family
+in general which recalls to my mind an interesting biennial custom which
+was said to hold good in the Manwell family. Every time a lesser jewel
+made its appearance, the mother-jewel was presented with a diamond and
+ruby ornament of varying magnificence, with the words "The price of a
+good woman is far above rubies" conveniently inscribed thereon.
+
+Aunt Anna took it all very seriously, from the tiara downward, and if
+diamond and ruby shoe-buckles had not involved twins, I think she would
+have hankered after those, but even as it was, she came in time to
+possess a very remarkable collection of rubies and diamonds.
+
+Aunt Anna is very prosperous, very happy, very rich, and very contented.
+
+She prides herself on none of these things, but only on the unprejudiced
+state of her maternal mind.
+
+"Of course," she says, "I cannot help seeing that my children are more
+beautiful than other people's. It would be ludicrously affected and
+hypocritical of me if I pretended otherwise. If they were plain, I
+should be the first to see it, and--"
+
+I think she was going to add "say it," but she stopped short; she
+invariably does at a deliberate lie, because she is a very truthful
+woman, and thinks a lie is a wicked thing unless socially a necessity.
+
+I arrived at tea-time which is a thing Aunt Anna expects of her guests.
+I noticed that she looked a little less contented than usual, and that
+she even gave way to a gesture of impatience when Mrs. Blankley asked
+for a fifth cup of tea. Mrs. Blankley is a great advocate of temperance.
+In connection with which, Aunt Anna once said that she thought there
+should be temperance in all things beginning with "t." Which vague
+saying, as illustrative of her wit, was treasured up by her indulgent
+husband and quoted "As Anna so funnily said."
+
+Now as Aunt Anna, we know, never says witty things unless under strong
+provocation, she rarely says them, for she is of an amazingly even
+temperament. She often says she considers cleverness a very dangerous
+gift. It is not one I seek for either myself or my children. It is so
+easy to say clever, unkind things. Every one can do it if they choose;
+the difficulty is not to say them.
+
+It is evident that Aunt Anna chooses the harder part.
+
+Mrs. Blankley, having disposed of the fifth cup of tea, expressed a
+desire to see the pigs. Aunt Anna never goes to see pigs, nor demands
+that sacrifice of Londoners, for which act of consideration I honor her;
+not but what I am fond of pigs, black ones and small. Aunt Anna knows
+that there are such things because of the continual presence of bacon
+in her midst. She also knows that pigs are things that get prizes.
+She still clings to her childish belief that streaky bacon comes from
+feeding the pigs one day and not the next.
+
+Every one, like Mrs. Blankley, had a thirst to see something, and I
+was left alone with Aunt Anna, to discuss Pauline's wedding. As a
+rule, there is nothing Aunt Anna would sooner discuss, but I saw that
+something was worrying her, and I guessed that the unburdening of a
+rarely perturbed mind was imminent. It was.
+
+"Is anything wrong?--" I asked. "Any of the children worrying you?" She
+nodded and pointed to a diamond and ruby brooch and said plaintively.
+"This one, Claud, just a little worrying."
+
+I tried to hide a smile. "Oh, that's Claud, is it? I get a little
+mixed."
+
+"I dare say, dear," she said; "but it's quite simple, really. Jack was
+the tiara, and so on."
+
+"What has Claud been doing?" I asked. "Oh, nothing he can help, I feel
+sure. He has a temperament, I believe. What it is I don't quite know;
+people grow out of it, I am told. It's not so much doing things as
+saying them; and his friends are odd, decidedly odd. They wear curious
+ties, have disheveled hair, and are distinctly decollete. I don't know
+if I should apply the word to men, but they are."
+
+I suggested that these little indiscretions on the part of extreme youth
+need not worry her. But she said they did, in a way, because her
+other children were so very plain sailing. They never took any one by
+surprise. She then told me of poor Lady Adelaide, a near neighbor, at
+least as near as it was possible for any neighbor to be, considering
+the extent of the Manwell property, one of whose boys had written a book
+without her knowledge, and the other had married under exactly similar
+conditions.
+
+I said I thought the writing of a book a minor offense compared to
+the matrimonial venture. She agreed, but said they were both upsetting
+because unexpected. As an instance, did I remember when Lady Victoria
+was butted by her pet lamb, when she was showing the Prince her white
+farm? It wasn't the upsetting she minded, so much as the unexpectedness
+of it, because the lamb had a blue ribbon round its neck!
+
+"A black sheep in a white farm, Aunt Anna!" I said.
+
+"No, dear, it was white, and it was a lamb."
+
+But to return to Lady Adelaide. Now that Aunt Anna came to think of it,
+the marriage was the better of the two shocks, because financially it
+was a success, and the book wasn't. "Books aren't," She added.
+
+"Is that all Claud does, or, rather, his friends do?" I asked.
+
+"No, it's not," she said. "Ever since he went to Oxford he has changed
+completely. He has got into his head that we are a self-centered family,
+and that I am a prejudiced mother, when it is the only thing I am not.
+I may be everything else for all I know, I may be daily breaking all
+the commandments without knowing it! But a prejudiced mother I am not!
+Before he went to Oxford he came into my bedroom one morning, and he
+said that he thought Maud and Edith were quite the most beautiful girls
+he had ever seen, and he had sat behind some famous beauty in a theatre
+a few nights before. I didn't ask him! I was suffering from neuralgia at
+the time, I remember, and he might, under the circumstances, have agreed
+just to soothe me, but he said it of his own accord, and he wondered if
+they would go up to London and walk down Bond Street with him. I said
+it should be arranged. They walked with him three times up and down Bond
+Street; he only asked for once. I am only telling you this because you
+will then realize what this change in him means to me. He came back
+from Oxford after one term and he said nothing about the girls' beauty,
+although I thought them improved. I didn't say so; I made some little
+joke about Bond Street, which he pretended not to understand. So I just
+said I thought the girls improved, or rather were looking very pretty,
+and he said, 'My dear mother, we must learn to look at these things from
+the point of view of the outsider. Place yourself in the position of a
+man of the world seeing them for the first time.'"
+
+To begin with, Aunt Anna proceeded to explain, she could never place
+herself in a position to which she was not born; she did not think it
+right. She said that Claud then urged her to look at it from stranger's
+point of view, since that of man of the world was impracticable, which
+Aunt Anna said was a thing no mother could do, nor would she wish to do
+it. She left such things to actresses. Talking of actresses reminded her
+that Claud had even found fault with Maud as an actress, when every
+one knew how very excellent she was. Several newspapers, the Southshire
+Herald in particular, had alluded to her as one of our most talented
+actresses.
+
+"We had a professional down to coach her, and he said there was really
+nothing he could teach her. He was a very nice man, and had all his
+meals with us. I went," continued Aunt Anna, "to see the great French
+actress who was in London in the spring, you remember? And if ever a
+mother went with an unprejudiced mind, I was that mother. I was prepared
+to think she was better than Maud, and if she had been, I should have
+been the first to say it. But she was not, at least not to my mind! Maud
+is always a lady, even on the stage, and that woman was not."
+
+I ventured to suggest that she was perhaps not supposed to be a lady in
+the part. Aunt Anna said, "Perhaps not, but that does not matter;
+Maud would be a lady under any circumstances, whatever character she
+impersonated, laundress or lady. Claud says she will never act till
+she learns to forget herself I trust one of my daughters will never do
+that!"
+
+I strove to pacify Aunt Anna, but her tender heart was wounded and she
+was hard to comfort.
+
+"Claud must admire Edith's violin playing," I ventured.
+
+Aunt Anna shook her head. "He begged me to eliminate from my mind all
+preconceived notions and to judge her from the unprejudiced point of
+view. I told Edith to put away her violin. Claud says I must call it a
+fiddle. I could not bear to see it. I never thought there could be such
+dissension in our united family."
+
+By way of distraction, I asked if the young man at tea with the
+disheveled hair and startlingly unorthodox tie was a friend of Claud's,
+and she said, "His greatest!"
+
+At that moment Claud came into the room, wearing a less earnest
+expression than usual and Aunt Anna held out a hand of forgiveness. He
+warmly clasped it. "Mother," he said, "Windlehurst has just told me, in
+strict confidence, that he considers Maud's the most beautiful face he
+has ever seen, except, of course, in the best period of ancient Greek
+art. I knew you wanted to hear the unprejudiced opinion of an unbiased
+outsider."
+
+I wondered how Windlehurst would like the description! Claud went on: "I
+think Edith every bit as good looking, more so in some ways. Now that
+I have heard an unprejudiced opinion I can express mine, which you have
+known all along. You see, mother, people say we are a self-centered and
+egotistical family. I have proved that we are not."
+
+"Dear, dearest Claud, your tie is disarranged," murmured his mother,
+struggling to reduce it to the dimensions of the orthodox sailor knot.
+"Do wait and listen to all dear Betty is telling me of dearest Pauline's
+wedding. So interesting. Go on, dear Betty; where had we got to?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+My correspondence regarding my summer plans was varied, and the
+suggestions contained therein numerous. Here are some of the letters.
+
+Diana's:
+
+Darling Betty,--What do you say to the Cornish coast, coves, cream, and
+children! As much of the coast and cream, and as little of the children
+as you like! David has a bachelor shoot in view, and I think sea air
+would do the children good. I do not propose leaving any nurses at home,
+or sending them away; they shall all come and run after Sara should she
+get into the sea, when she ought not to, but you and I will have the joy
+of watching her. She really is delicious paddling. Think of the
+rocks, and the coves, and the sands, and not of the wind or of other
+disadvantages that may strike you. As much as you like you shall read,
+and whatever you like, so long as you will, at intervals, look up and
+smile at me. I shall love to feel you are there, so do come, not as a
+professional aunt, as you sometimes describe yourself, but as your own
+dear self.
+
+     Your loving
+     DIANA
+
+Zerlina's:
+
+Dearest Betty,--I know how difficult you are to find disengaged, but do
+try and come to Cornwall with us. The children would love to have you,
+and I know you enjoy tearing about after them on the sands! Nurse must
+go home for her holiday, and the nursery-maid is so useless. But you
+shall do exactly as you like. I know you wouldn't mind if I left you
+for a day or two. Jim is so keen that I should go to the Cross-Patches,
+being in the neighborhood, more or less. Do write and say you will come.
+I do get such headaches at the seaside, and I look so awful when I get
+sun burnt, but it suits you.
+
+     Yours,
+     ZERLINA
+
+Julia's:
+
+Betty dear,--You have simply got to come. Diana tells me she is asking
+you to Cornwall, and that, I know, you will not refuse, because for
+some extraordinary reason you can't refuse her anything. Oh! for Diana's
+charm for one day a week! What wouldn't I do! That woman wastes her
+life; I've always said so. But go to Cornwall, blazes, or anywhere you
+like, but come here on your way back--everywhere is on the way back from
+Cornwall. Because the house is to be full of William's friends and he
+is never perfectly at ease unless there is a bishop among them, and a
+bishop drives me to desperate deeds of wickedness. They always like me!
+Betty, in your capacity of professional something, think of me. I want
+helping more than any one. I don't ask you to give up Cornwall, but
+afterwards, don't disappoint your
+
+     JULIA.
+
+A girl's:
+
+Dear Miss Lisle,--I wonder if you will remember me. I am almost afraid
+to hope so. But I met you last summer at the Anstells' garden-party,
+and you passed me an ice, vanilla and strawberry mixed! I have never
+forgotten it. It was not so much passing the ice, lots of people did
+that, as the way you did it. I was very unhappy at the time, and there
+was something in your expression as you did it that made me feel you
+were unlike any one else I had ever met. I wore green muslin!
+
+I am wondering whether you would come to Cornwall, to stay with us.
+The coast is lovely, and in its wildness one can forget one's self,
+and that, I think, is what one most wants to do! I know what a help you
+would be to me, if you could come, and I will tell you all my troubles
+when we have been together some days. One gets to know people by the sea
+very quickly, I think, don't you? Although I feel as if I had known you
+all my life. My hat was brown, mushroom.
+
+     Your sincere friend and admirer,
+     VERONICA VOKINS
+
+P. S.--I forgot to say that my father and mother will be delighted to
+see you. I have ten brothers and sisters, but there is miles of coast,
+and I and my five sisters have a sitting-room all to ourselves. Father
+says "he" must pass his examinations first. I tell you this because you
+will then understand. "He" won the obstacle race at the Anstells', but
+he was in a sack, so I expect you did not notice him!
+
+The big, sad Thomas:
+
+Dear Miss Lisle,--For months, in fact since the day you restored the
+screw to my small son, I have been trying to write to you on a subject
+that may or may not be distasteful to you. That it will come as a
+surprise I feel sure. My love for my boy must be my excuse; nothing else
+could justify my writing to any woman as I am about to write to you.
+Will you be a mother to my Thomas? It would not be honest on my part
+to pretend that I can offer you in myself anything but a very sad and
+lonely man, the best of me having gone. No one could ever,--or shall
+ever, take the place of my beloved wife in my heart, the remains of
+which I offer unreservedly to you. For the sake of my boy I am prepared
+to sacrifice myself, and I can at least promise you that you shall never
+regret by any action of mine whatever sacrifice it may entail on your
+part. I shall not insult you by the mention of money matters or any such
+things, for I feel sure that the fact of my being a rich man will make
+no difference in your decision as to whether or no you will be a mother
+to my Thomas.
+
+     Yours very sincerely,
+     THOMAS GLYNNE
+
+Lady Glenburnie's:
+
+Dear Betty,--If you should be in the North,--and why not make a
+certainty of it?--don't forget us! A line to say when and where to meet
+you is all we want, and you will find the warmest of welcomes awaiting
+you, and your own favorite room in the turret. Don't mention nephews or
+nieces in answering this.
+
+     Your affectionate
+     MARY GLENBURNIE
+
+Brother Archie's:
+
+Angel Betty,--Help a brother in distress. I'm desperately in love. First
+of all,--how long do you suppose it will last? Forever, I think. But I
+can't live at this pitch for long, and my summer plans depend on it. She
+is lovely. Makes me long to sing hymns on Sunday evenings; you know
+the kind of thing--feeling, I should say! She's like Pauline, only more
+beautiful, I think. I will tell you all about it when we meet. There are
+complications. My first trouble is this: I have taken a small place in
+Skye with Coningsby. Now it is perfectly impossible to live with Con
+when one is in love; of all the unsympathetic, dried-up old crabs, he
+is the worst. Now the question is, can I buy him out? Have you to stay
+instead, ask my beloved too, save her from drowning, which in Skye
+should be easy, and then live happily ever afterwards. I am consumed
+with a desire to save her from something. It is a symptom, I know, but,
+Betty dear, it is serious this time. Her eyes look as if they saw into
+another world, which makes me feel hopeless! I don't mind you hinting
+something about it to Julia, if you should see her. You needn't enter
+into details!
+
+     Yours ever,
+     ARCHIE
+
+Of all the letters, Diana's was the most tempting.
+
+Zerlina's had no power to lure. Dear Archie's little--he had so often
+written the same--sort of letters. Veronica Vokins' less, and the sad,
+big Thomas! What a curious letter! I hardly knew whether to laugh or to
+cry. How careful he was to point out the sacrifice on his part entailed
+in his offer. It was hardly flattering to me, except that he refrained
+from mentioning his worldly goods, or the advantages to me accruing from
+the bestowal thereof. I had at least looked unworldly when I had visited
+the small Thomas in bed; of that I was glad. And, after all, why should
+I mind? It is something, perhaps, to be asked to be a mother to a small
+fat Thomas. I wrote, refusing as kindly as I could. I dare say there are
+women who would accept the position. Let us hope, if one be found to do
+so, that she will not forget the mother part!
+
+Dear Lady Glenburnie's letter had something of temptation lurking in
+it somewhere. The turret room, commanding its views of purple hills and
+sunsets, and the warmest of welcomes! But, again, the most aching of
+memories. I could not go there again under circumstances so different.
+If ever it could be again as it had been, how I should love it! So that
+invitation I declined, saying I should be in Cornwall with Diana. Lady
+Glenburnie would forgive the mention of Diana, I knew, and of Betty,
+Hugh, and Sara I said nothing, as she had stipulated.
+
+Then I wrote to Julia saying I would go to her after I had been to
+Cornwall. She might need consoling by then, should Archie have proved
+himself recovered of the wounds inflicted by her. This I did not tell
+her. If I waited a little, there might be nothing to tell.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+So to Cornwall I went, and found the sands and the coves and the rocks
+and the sea, just as Diana had said, nor was I disappointed in the back
+view of Sara with her petticoats tucked into her bathing-drawers. It was
+divine. She was delicious, too, paddling, and there were enough nurses
+to prevent her doing more, if necessary, and Diana and I could, if we
+liked, lie on the sands and watch the children. But it so happens that I
+love building castles and making puddings, and, curiously enough, Diana
+does too, and we were children once more with perhaps less hinge in our
+backs than formerly, but still we enjoyed ourselves immensely.
+
+Betty, the first day, full of faith, tried to walk on the sea, and was
+pulled out very wet and disappointed, and her faith a little shaken,
+perhaps, for the moment. Hugh told her she didn't have faith hard
+enough. "You must go like this," and he held his breath, threatening to
+become purple in the face.
+
+"Could you now?" said Betty wistfully, when Hugh was at his reddest.
+
+"No!" he said, "because I burst. Aunt Woggles looked at me when I was
+just believing very hard."
+
+Betty forgot that trouble in her infinite delight at discovering where
+Heaven really was. She knew if she could just row out to the silver
+pathway across the sea, it would lead straight to Heaven. "I know it
+would," she said.
+
+Hugh objected because Heaven was in the sky, that he knew! Betty said
+how did he know?
+
+"Well, look," said Hugh; "you can see it's all bright and blue and
+shining, and angels fly, and you can't fly on the sea, so that shows."
+
+Betty wasn't sure of that because of flying-fish; she'd seen them in
+a book where "F" was for flying-fish, so she knew. But Hugh knew that
+angels weren't fish, because fish is good to eat and angels aren't.
+I was glad the culinary knowledge of Hugh and Betty didn't extend to
+"angels on horseback," or where should we have been in the abysses of
+argument?
+
+We made expeditions which, as expeditions, were not a success. Sara
+objected to leaving the object of her passing affections, a starfish
+perhaps, and Hugh and Betty also always found treasures of their very
+own, which they must just watch for just a little time, in case they
+did something exciting. These things hinder! But still we did sometimes
+reach another cove, and one day, in a very secluded one, I caught sight
+of a pair of lovers. One can tell the most discreet of them at a glance,
+and more than a glance I should never have given this pair had not the
+girl, so much of her as I could see under a brown mushroom hat, been
+very pretty. Her dress too was green muslin, which was in itself
+compelling, and the boy with her, I felt sure, had passed no
+examinations. And yet they were deliriously happy, that I could tell.
+So the father wasn't so cruel, after all, and I doubted whether I should
+have been the comfort to Veronica that she had anticipated. In fact,
+I could easily imagine how greatly in the way I should have been. Poor
+professional friend! That I had at least been spared from becoming.
+
+Veronica, no less than Betty, had discovered where Heaven really was,
+and the boy had a clearer definition of angels than Hugh. Hugh was right
+so far--they were in no way related to, or bore any resemblance to,
+fish. They were angels pure and simple, and the most beautiful of them,
+the most enchanting of them, wore a green muslin and a brown mushroom
+hat.
+
+If I had been that young man, I should have objected to the dimensions
+of that hat, but he didn't, I suppose. Not having passed his
+examinations may have made a difference. He would later on, no doubt. It
+is a pity, perhaps, that men have to pass examinations; it robs them of
+much of their simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+Zerlina discovered, to her immense surprise, that she was near enough
+to bring all her party to play with ours, and it was arranged that she
+should do so on the first fine day.
+
+It so happened that all the days were fine, so every day Diana and I
+watched for the small cloud in the distance that should herald their
+approach, and one day it appeared, no bigger than a man's hand. When
+it came nearer it was considerably bigger, and it finally assumed
+the dimensions of Zerlina, Hyacinth, the twins, Teddy, and a small
+nursery-maid. Betty was immensely delighted with the twins, her one
+ambition in life being to have twins of her own. Failing that, and every
+birthday only brought fresh disappointment in its wake, the care of
+somebody else's was the next best thing.
+
+They really were delicious people, so round and so solemn. Hugh, for
+the moment, was engrossed in Teddy; Teddy having, among other things,
+a knife with "things in it," most of which he was mercifully unable to
+open. It was the certainty of being able to do so on the part of Hugh,
+which made him so deliriously busy. Sara was out of it, having no one
+as yet to play with, and she was proud and disdainful in consequence. I
+knew that Betty would shortly have one twin to spare, perhaps two, but
+this Sara could not guess, knowing nothing of twins.
+
+"Now, Sara," I said, "we will build a castle all for our very own
+selves."
+
+"Our velly, velly own selves," said Sara, hugging her spade with
+ecstasy. "A velly, velly big castle."
+
+"Very, very big," I replied.
+
+"A bemormous castle?"
+
+"An enormous castle," I said, starting to dig the foundations.
+
+"Dat's a velly, velly vitty hole," said Sara.
+
+"It's going to be a castle, darling."
+
+"For Yaya to live in?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"And Nannie and Aunt Woggles and Hugh and Betty and muvver?"
+
+Sara danced with joy at the prospect, and Sara dancing in
+bathing-drawers was distracting. I dug industriously, however, and it
+was very hot. Sara looked on, occasionally watering the castle and me
+too.
+
+"Not too much water, darling," I said, "because it makes Aunt Woggles so
+wet."
+
+Sara subsided for the moment. "Is it a velly big castle?" she asked
+every now and then with evident anxiety.
+
+"It's going to be, darling," I said.
+
+"It's a velly, velly small castle now," she said sadly.
+
+I dug harder and harder, and it seemed to me that the castle was
+becoming quite a respectable size, but Sara's interest had flagged.
+
+"Aunt Woggles," she said.
+
+"Yes, darling," I answered.
+
+"Sall we dig a velly, velly deep hole, velly, velly deep, for all ve
+cwabs, and all ve vitty fish, and Nannie and Aunt Woggles?"
+
+"A very big hole," I said; "but look at the lovely castle!"
+
+"Yaya doesn't yike 'ollid ole castles," she said.
+
+I began to dig a hole. One does these things, I find, for the Saras of
+this world, and Sara was for the moment enchanted, but it didn't last
+long.
+
+"Yaya's so sirsty," she said. "Yaya wants a 'ponge cake."
+
+"I think you would rather have some milk, darling," I said.
+
+"Yaya's so sirsty," she said in a very sad voice. "Yaya would yike a
+'ponge cake!"
+
+"Very well, darling; but don't you want to dig any more?"
+
+"No," she said. "Yaya doesn't yike digging."
+
+Now was that fair?--digging, indeed, when it was the poor aunt who had
+been digging all the time. When I told Diana of this she shook her head
+and said,-- "Betty, it frightens me. Do you think Sara will grow up that
+sort of woman?"
+
+"What sort of woman?"
+
+"Like Polly in Charles Dudley Warner's 'My Summer in a Garden.' You
+remember when the husband says, 'Polly, do you know who planted that
+squash, or those squashes?'"
+
+"'James, I suppose.'
+
+"'Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. But who
+hoed them?'
+
+"'We did.'"
+
+"Well, it seems to me," I said, "that she was rather a delightful
+person."
+
+"In a book, absolutely delightful. I am only thinking of Sara's husband,
+poor man! You see Polly's husband was an American, and that makes all
+the difference. You remember I told you of a man I met who in decorating
+his house wanted to have red walls as a background to his beautiful
+pictures, and his wife wanted to have green. I asked him what he did,
+and he said he made a compromise. I said how clever of him, how did he
+do it? and he said, 'We had green!' You see, Betty, what an American
+husband means!"
+
+"Well, to return to Sara's, you need not worry. I think he will, in
+all probability, be in such raptures over the possession of anything
+so delicious as Sara promises to be, that he will overlook these little
+pluralities on her part."
+
+"Yes, Betty, of course; but does that sort of thing last?"
+
+"You ought to know, to a certain extent."
+
+"Ah! but then David is such a dear."
+
+"I think it is quite likely that Sara will find a dear too."
+
+"I hope so, oh! how I hope so!" said Diana. "I often wonder what it must
+be to find you have given your daughter to some one who is unkind to
+her. I can hardly imagine so great a sorrow! I dare not even think of
+David the day Betty marries. He says he thinks it must be worse for a
+father than a mother."
+
+"I wonder," I said. "I think a mother perhaps has a greater belief in
+the goodness of men; a woman, a happy woman certainly, has so little
+knowledge of men, other than her own."
+
+"Yes," said Diana, "a good father and a good husband give one a very
+deep rooted faith and belief in the goodness of mankind generally. How
+we are prosing, Betty!"
+
+Zerlina meanwhile sat on a rock, of the hardness of which she
+complained. She found fault with our cove, the sun was too hot and the
+wind was too strong. But then she had driven ten miles in a wagonette
+under Teddy and the twins, so it was no wonder she grumbled a little.
+
+"I can't think," she said plaintively, "why my hair doesn't look nice
+when it blows about in the wind, and I hate myself sun burnt. I can't
+bear seeing my nose wherever I look. You and Betty are the stuff martyrs
+are made of. It would be comparatively easy to walk to the stake if you
+had the right amount of hair hanging down behind; without it, no amount
+of religious conviction would avail. Oh dear, I used to have such lots,
+before I had measles! I hardly knew what to do with it!"
+
+"That's rather what we find with Betty's," said Diana; "we plait it up
+as tight as we can, don't we, darling?" she said, re-tying the ribbon
+which secured Betty's very thick pigtail.
+
+"I had twice as much as Betty, at her age, I'm sure," said Zerlina,
+forgetting a photograph which stands on Jim's dressing-table, of a small
+fat girl with very little hair and that rather scraggy. But what does it
+matter? These are the sort of traditions women cling to.
+
+Someone suggested building a steamship in the sand, grown-ups, children,
+and all, and Hugh was told to go and make a second-class berth. He
+retired to a short distance, and no sound coming from his direction, we
+looked round and saw him in ecstatic raptures, rocking himself backward
+and forward.
+
+"What are you doing, Hugh?" we said.
+
+"Well," said Hugh, "I was told to make a second-class berth. I suppose
+that means twins, and I 'm nursing them."
+
+Zerlina took it quite well, and was easily persuaded that there was no
+insult intended to her twins in particular.
+
+A few minutes later Sara appeared, triumphant, having apparently found a
+small child to play with.
+
+"Who is your little friend, Sara?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head. She didn't know, but he was delicious to play with
+for all that, and she bore him off in triumph.
+
+He was not long unsought, for a young girl came anxiously towards us and
+said, "Have you seen a little boy?"
+
+It reminded me a little of the story, the other way round, of a lost boy
+who asked a man, "Please, sir, have you seen a man without a little boy,
+because if you have, I'm the little boy."
+
+She looked as anxious and as distraught as that little boy must have
+looked, I am sure.
+
+"I think," said Diana, "you will find him behind that rock.--Sara,"
+called Diana, "bring the little boy here."
+
+A small portion of Sara's person appeared round the rock:--"We're velly
+busy," she said.
+
+So rapidly do women make friendships!
+
+"He's quite safe," said Diana; "your little brother, I suppose?"
+
+The girl blushed. "No, I'm his mother," she said.
+
+She looked so young and so pretty, and her hair must have moved Zerlina
+to tears, it was so beautiful, and grew so prettily on her forehead. But
+she looked too young to be searching for lost babies all by herself.
+
+"How old is he?" asked Diana.
+
+"He's three," she said; then added, "his father never saw him; he went
+to the war soon after we were married, and he was killed. Baby is just
+like him," and she unfastened a miniature she wore on a chain round her
+neck and handed it to Diana.
+
+I am sure Diana saw nothing but a blur, but she managed to say, "You
+must be glad! Come and see my little girl, she is very much the same
+age."
+
+"What an extraordinarily communicative person!" said Zerlina as they
+walked off. "Just imagine telling strangers the whole of your history
+like that. I wonder if her husband left her well off."
+
+"Can't you see he did?" I said.
+
+"No; I don't think she is very well dressed, but you never can tell with
+that picturesque style of dressing. It may or may not be expensive; even
+that old embroidery only means probably that she had a grandmother.
+It is a terrible thing for a girl of that age to be left with a boy to
+bring up. I know, Betty, just what you are thinking--cold, heartless,
+mercenary Zerlina! But I'm practical."
+
+When Diana came back, I could see in her face that she knew all about
+the poor little widow. It is wonderful what a comfort it seems to be
+even to strangers to confide in Diana. For one thing I feel sure they
+know that she won't tell, and that makes all the difference. It is a
+relief sometimes to tell some one, although some things can be better
+borne when nobody knows. But I imagine there was little bitterness in
+the sorrow of this girl widow. She too had learned something from Diana,
+for she turned to me and said, "Are you a relation of Captain Lisle?"
+
+"If his name is Archie," I said, "I am his sister."
+
+"I've met him," and she blushed.
+
+This, then, was the girl Archie longed to save from drowning, and who
+inspired him with a desire to sing hymns on Sunday evenings. Dear old
+Archie! I could imagine his tender, susceptible heart going out to the
+little widow. But I said to myself, "It's no good, Archie dear, not yet
+at all events, not while she looks as she does over the sea," for I was
+sure it was far away in a grave on the lonely veldt that her heart was
+buried.
+
+"He is so devoted to children, isn't he?" she said. "He was so good to
+my baby. I find that men are so extraordinarily fond of children. I am
+afraid they will spoil him."
+
+Whereupon the baby burst into a long dissertation on a present he had
+lately received. It sounded something like this:--
+
+"Mormousman give boy a yockerile an a epelan, anye yockerile yanan yan
+all over de jurnmer yunder de hoha an eberelyyare."
+
+He then proceeded to turn bead over heels, or try to, and was sharply
+rebuked by Sara, who rearranged his garments with stern severity,
+and then was about to show him the right method, when she in turn was
+stopped by Nannie.
+
+One of the twins arrived at this moment to say that Hugh had called him
+bad names. Betty the peacemaker explained that Hugh had called him
+a wicket keeper, and the twin had thought he had called him a wicked
+keeper. So that was all right. We suggested that, in any case, the twin
+wasn't the best person to be wicket keeper. But he went in twice running
+to make up, and Hugh gave him several puddings as well. "Puddings," the
+nursery-maid explained, were first balls, and didn't count.
+
+"Betty," I said, "you've got a hole in your stocking!"
+
+"I hope it 's not a Jacob's ladder," said Betty.
+
+"Hush, darling, hush," said Hugh; "you know we mustn't be irreverent!"
+
+It was during an interval when we rested and drank milk and ate cake,
+those of us who would or could, that we discovered that the little widow
+was staying with a very old friend of my father's and mother's.
+
+"And where does Lady Mary live?" asked Diana.
+
+"Just over there. Do come and see her; she will be so delighted to see
+you and to show you the garden, which is quite famous."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+The following day Diana got a delightful letter from Lady Mary asking us
+to go to luncheon, or to tea, or to both, or whatever we liked best, so
+long as it was at once, and that we stayed a long time, and brought all
+the children. She offered to send for us, but going in a donkey-cart was
+a stipulation on the part of the children, otherwise they could not or
+would not tear themselves away from the sand and all its fascinations.
+Sara was particularly offended at having to get out to tea, and more so
+at not being allowed to go in her bathing-drawers. But a mushroom hat
+trimmed with daisies appeased her, and even at that early age she saw
+the incongruity of that hat and those nether garments. They were packed,
+Hugh, Betty, Sara, and the nursery-maid, into the donkey-cart. Betty was
+supposed to drive, but Hugh and Sara had so large a share in the stage
+direction of that donkey, that I wonder we ever arrived. We did.
+Our approach was not dignified. The donkey would eat the lawn at the
+critical moment, and neither the stern rebukes of Sara, nor the gentle
+persuasion of Betty, had any effect; neither, to tell the truth, had the
+chastisements of Hugh. Of Diana's efforts and mine it is unnecessary
+to speak; they only made us very hot. As to Nannie, she said she would
+rather have ten children to deal with.
+
+There were horribly tidy and beautifully dressed people walking about on
+the lawn, people who had never, I felt sure, been called upon to speak
+unkindly to a donkey. It was a little tactless of them, I thought, in
+view of our flushed cheeks, to appear so calm and cool, but they were
+quite kind, and I noticed that Diana as usual held a little court of her
+own, not entirely as the mother of Sara, either. Hugh and Betty too made
+friends, and hearing shouts of laughter coming from Hugh's audience, I
+went, aunt-like, to see what was happening, and I heard Hugh saying:--
+
+"I've got another! What did the skeleton--"
+
+"Hugh," I said, "I want you!"
+
+"I'm asking riddles, Aunt Woggles."
+
+"Yes, but have you seen the tortoise?"
+
+The situation was saved.
+
+I look back to the rest of that afternoon, and it is all blur and
+confusion. I remember the loveliness of the gardens, the peeps of
+distant moorland through arches of pink ramblers. I remember how the sun
+shone and how beautiful everything was, and above all and through all
+those confused memories I hear the quiet, gentle voice of Lady Mary as
+she talked to me of things of which I had thought no one knew anything.
+She asked me, I remember, if I would like to see the garden, and I loved
+her for her graciousness, her affection, and for her love for my mother.
+I could see even in the way she looked at me that it was of my mother he
+was thinking, and I remember, in answer to her question whether I liked
+the garden, saying I thought it was quite beautiful and so peaceful!
+
+She said, "That is what I feel, the peace of it all. But you, dear
+Betty, are too young to feel that. It is as we grow older that the
+promise of peace holds out so much. But to the young, life is before
+them!"
+
+All that, I remember quite clearly, and a little more. I can still see
+Lady Mary, so beautiful, so calm, so confident in the peace which the
+future held for her. Then all of a sudden came these words, "Betty, I
+liked your hero so much; what happened?"
+
+It was a too sudden opening of prison doors. I was blinded by the light.
+I could say nothing. My secret, I felt, was wrested from me. I had
+ceased almost to try to hide it, it seemed so safe. What--could I say?
+
+Lady Mary went on: "It is not from curiosity that I ask, but from a very
+real and deep interest. Your dear mother used so often to talk of your
+future. Her love for you was very wonderful, Betty."
+
+I looked away to the purple hills and longed to escape, but she laid her
+hand on mine with a gentle pressure. "I liked him so much. His gentle
+chivalry appealed to me; it is a thing one does not meet every day. Some
+one, I remember, described him as being as hard as nails and full of
+sentiment, which was a charming description of a delightful character
+and a rare combination. All women, I think, would have their heroes
+strong, and the sentiment makes all the difference in life. If it is
+money, Betty dear, as I imagine it is, that must come right. It was
+money?"
+
+"His father got into difficulties, no fault of his own, that--and
+friends made mischief."
+
+"And he is helping his father," continued Lady Mary. "And while he is
+doing that, he thinks he has no right to bind a woman."
+
+How could I say when I didn't know? "Men make that mistake; they forget
+how much easier it is for a woman to wait bound than to be free, not
+knowing. They don't distinguish between the woman who wants to get
+married and the woman who loves. Remember, Betty, how hard it must be
+for him. I am not sure that his is not the harder part."
+
+"If he cares," I said.
+
+"I am sure he cares," said Lady Mary softly. "There are secrets that are
+not mine, Betty, but there is one that is--the money shall come right. I
+had been looking out for a hero for some time when I met yours. This
+is strictly between ourselves, and you must remember that all my young
+people are so ludicrously well off, that an old woman doing as she likes
+with her own will do no one any harm. If I had had children, that, of
+course, would have made a difference. To me, who have lived the quiet
+life I have lately lived, the soldier, the man of action, appeals very
+strongly. Much as I love this place, it seems to me that I should love
+it still more if it came as quiet after a storm, a haven of rest after
+the battle of life."
+
+Then she spoke of Diana. "Hers is a wonderful character, and I often
+think how beautiful it is that she should follow your dear mother at
+Hames."
+
+"You feel that?" I said.
+
+"Very, very strongly, dear. How happy it must have made her to feel that
+her grandchildren should have such a mother. I may be wrong, and you
+will smile at an old woman's prejudice and think that she is looking
+back with prejudiced eyes into that wonderful past which is always so
+much better than any present. I am not, but still it seems to me that
+Diana has something that all young people have not got nowadays, a
+reverence for the old, an admiration for the good, and a pity for the
+poor and distressed. These things take you far through life, dear, and,
+combined with her wonderful vitality and beauty, make her a power.
+
+"Talking of your beautiful mother, it was said years ago that she was
+the only woman of whom I had ever been jealous. I am old enough to
+tell you these things. It is the privilege of the old to enlist the
+sympathies of the young! But it was not true. I had every reason to be
+jealous, as had most women I ever saw, but jealousy in connection with
+anything so perfect as your mother, I think, was not possible. Her
+beauty was of the kind which disarms jealousy. It was beyond comparison
+or criticism. It seemed to belong to another world, and yet she was so
+tender to the sinners, so understanding, so full of loving kindness.
+Hers was a beauty of the soul as well as the body, and that beauty is as
+remote from the everyday prettiness as the earth is from the stars. Her
+expression had something of the divine in it, as if she had seen God
+face to face. I see the same look coming in Diana's face. Old Sir George
+used to say it would be worth committing a sin to be forgiven by your
+mother. He said her look was a benediction."
+
+As I said good-by to Lady Mary, she held my hand and said, "Betty dear,
+you will some day forgive an interfering old woman, and in days to come,
+when you look to these distant hills, you will remember this day with a
+kind thought for your beautiful mother's old friend."
+
+"Isn't Lady Mary a darling?" said Diana, as we walked home through the
+scented lanes on that most wonderful of summer evenings. "You look as if
+you had been seeing visions, Betty, quite dazed like, as Nannie used to
+say."
+
+"I often see visions," I said.
+
+"Have you been crying, Aunt Woggles?" said Hugh. "Were all the peaches
+gone when you got back?"
+
+Betty slipped her little hand into mine. "You promised to let me walk
+with you for a little. Shall we pick honeysuckle, supposing we see any?"
+
+"Yes, we will, darling."
+
+"Supposing you can't reach it," she said.
+
+"There is always some within reach."
+
+"I suppose grown-ups can always reach things," said Betty.
+
+Later, in the quiet darkness of the night, I could picture the garden,
+the roses, the distant moor, Lady Mary's beautiful face, but I could not
+bring myself to believe that I had really heard those words, "I am sure
+that he cares."
+
+Surely I had dreamed them, or Lady Mary had, because if they were true,
+why had he said nothing? How should he have told her what he could not
+tell me?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+Then came that wonderful morning on which I read that Captain Paul
+Buchanan was coming home, was expected to arrive that very day. I opened
+the paper at breakfast, as usual and my eyes caught the word that at
+any time had the power to set my heart thumping and to send the blood
+rushing to my head, a word common enough, and which to most people,
+beyond relating to a country always interesting, means little--Africa.
+It is curious that a day that is to change the whole of one's life
+should begin exactly like any other day. Of the most important things we
+have no premonition, most of us.
+
+That what I longed and prayed for every hour of my life should come to
+pass was not wonderful, but that a day on which I was to be called to
+make the greatest sacrifice of my life should steal stealthily upon me
+seems strange.
+
+That morning when I came downstairs, my little house in Chelsea looked
+exactly like it always had done. The sun shone as the sun does shine
+in the early winter in London, and no more, until after I had read that
+paragraph; then, behold a new world was born. Why had my eyes been
+blind to the gloriousness of the morning? Why had I thought the day an
+ordinarily dull one with just the amount of pale sunshine which is meted
+out to those happy people who are wise enough to live within easy reach
+of the river? Yes, I know, some people do say that Chelsea is foggy.
+
+It depends so much on their lives. No place could be foggy to me that
+day. My fear was that Nannie should read the news in my face. I looked
+away when she said, "Anything in the paper?" as she had said a hundred
+times before. She always came to see me eat my breakfast, so she said,
+but I knew it was really to hear the news. I handed her the paper,
+although I hated to let the words out of my sight, and she glanced at
+it. She paused and walked to the window. Kind Nannie, she was giving me
+time. She blew her nose, she was crying, she knew. A double knock at the
+door brought my heart to a standstill. Lady Mary was right, he did care.
+It seemed hours before the telegram was brought to me. I hardly dared
+to open it. There is some happiness too great to bear. I opened it and
+read:--
+
+
+Sara very ill. Come at once.
+
+      DIANA
+
+"Nannie," I said, "I am going to Hames."
+
+"To-day?" she said. She knew it was my day of days.
+
+"I must, Nannie. Will you come?"
+
+"No; I'll stay here. Poor Mrs. David, whatever will she do?"
+
+I could hardly imagine, and I am glad to remember that my sorrow seemed
+a small thing compared to hers.
+
+It would be impossible for me to describe that journey. The train crept
+along. It seemed to stop hours at the station. No one seemed to remember
+that Sara was ill. I felt the grip of a cold hand on my heart. Should
+I ever arrive? I did at last, and found a groom waiting for me at the
+station, with a dogcart. His mouth twitched, and he could hardly control
+his voice to tell me that there was no fresh news. The carriages were
+wanted for the doctors; did I mind the dogcart? Mind? I could have urged
+the horse to a gallop, and yet I dreaded to arrive.
+
+It was strange to pass through the quiet, deserted hall, up the stairs,
+and to hear no sound. A nurse opened a door and spoke in a whisper. I
+went into the room, and not until I saw Diana, so lovely in her grief,
+did I realize the agony of her suffering. She put out her hand and
+silently pressed mine. I turned away so that she should not see my face.
+
+A man, a stranger to me, sat by the bedside, his eyes fixed on the child
+lying there. He was the great London doctor, in whom I could see all
+hope was centered. There were other doctors and nurses, I believe, but
+it all seemed confusion to me now; but poor, broken hearted Nannie I
+remember. She stood at a distance. Not a sound was uttered, and I took
+up my watch with the others, to watch that precious life ebbing away.
+The soft flitting backward and forward of nurses, a word now and then
+from the great man who held not only the life of Sara in his hands, but,
+it seemed to me, the life of my beautiful Diana, only broke the intense
+silence. The night came on and we still watched.
+
+The doctor's face became sterner and graver and the little life weaker,
+or so it seemed to me. Diana knelt at the side of the bed. She never
+moved.
+
+As the dawn broke, Sara opened her eyes and said, "Nannie."
+
+Diana rose and beckoned to Nannie. Nannie hesitated, and Diana, taking
+her hand, whispered, "Dear Nannie, I am so glad," and gave up her place.
+It is not given to all of us to reach great heights, but Diana at that
+moment, I think, reached the divine in human nature. Then came the
+moment, too wonderful to think of, when the doctor told Diana that the
+great danger was over.
+
+Later he said to David, "My boy, you have given your children the
+greatest of all blessings in their mother. Thank God for her every
+moment of your life. I've seen many mothers and many sick children,
+but--thank God, and don't forget it."
+
+Dear David, I think most of us thank God oftener than we know and in
+many and divers ways, and I am not sure that David does not do it every
+time he looks at Diana.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+Sara, having got over the crisis and being on the fair road to
+recovery,--children recover quickly,--my heart turned towards home--and
+a longing to get back obsessed me. I could think of nothing but home,
+now that Diana's immediate need of me was over. She begged me to stay
+with her. To fail her at such a moment was a great grief to me, but I
+could make no further sacrifice. I must go home.
+
+"I must go, David," I urged.
+
+"Of course, if you must, you must, Betty, but I should have thought
+after all Diana has gone through, you would have stayed with her. You
+have always been so much to each other."
+
+How he hurt me, as if I wouldn't do anything in the world for Diana; but
+I must go home.
+
+"David," I said in desperation, "I must go. If I promise to come back
+directly, you won't misunderstand my going?"
+
+"I'll try to understand, Betty, that you have some very strong reason
+for going back."
+
+"Thank you, David," I said.
+
+"But," he continued, "you must tell Diana yourself."
+
+I went to her room, where she was lying down. "Diana, darling," I said,
+"I want very much to go home, if only for a day."
+
+"Of course, Betty, you must go. But don't look so distressed. I must
+have been selfish if I gave you the impression that I would not let you
+go. It is only that I love so having you, you are such a rock, and
+oh! it seems like some awful and terrible dream we have been through,
+doesn't it? Sara asked for her darling bunny today. Think what that
+means! Darling Betty, I pray that some great happiness may come to you
+some day. I begin to believe that the greatest joys come through the
+greatest sorrows."
+
+"Don't, Diana," I whispered. "I can't bear you to be too kind. I suppose
+it's all we've been through, but I feel."
+
+"I know, Betty," she whispered. "I lie here too tired to do anything but
+thank God. I ache with thankfulness, for you among other blessings. Come
+back soon."
+
+"What did Diana say?" asked David, who was waiting outside the door.
+"Did she understand?"
+
+"Understand? Did you ever know a time when Diana didn't understand?"
+
+I went. Oh, the joy of setting out towards home! That ridiculously small
+house in Chelsea in which were centered all my hopes. Some word might
+be there waiting for me. Nannie might have thought nothing of sufficient
+importance to forward at such a moment. How I hoped that was it, and
+that it might be there, else all my hopes were shattered.
+
+I opened the door with my latchkey. I looked. No telegram lay on the
+table; that I saw at a glance. Then Nannie appeared. She was crying.
+
+"Nannie," I said, "don't cry, she is much better, and is going to get
+quite well; only I had to come home."
+
+How explain to Nannie that I had left Sara and Diana at such a moment!
+
+"Your bat's crooked," said Nannie.
+
+"You ridiculous old person," I said, "what does that matter?" Nannie
+sniffed. I put my hat straight. "Is that better?"
+
+"Yes, it's better, it'll do," she answered, not quite satisfied,
+evidently. I wondered why she asked no questions. Why had I come home to
+this? No wonder David had been surprised at my leaving Diana! What was
+the use?
+
+Then Nannie said with a startling suddenness, "Some one is waiting for
+you upstairs."
+
+"Someone for me, Nannie. What do you mean?"
+
+"He's waiting," she said, between laughter and sobs. "He's waiting."
+
+I often wonder how I had the strength to go upstairs and open the
+door. But I did, and there surely enough he stood, only a few feet of
+green-painted boards separating us. How I crossed them I never knew. He
+came halfway, no doubt.
+
+I should never have done the journey alone, and I wondered too how it
+was we met as lovers! That was the most wonderful part of all. How, when
+I did not even know that he cared, could it have happened? It was all
+too wonderful, and I was too dazed with happiness to question anything
+at the moment. I only knew that the world had become a paradise, and
+that the past years of doubt and perplexity had fallen away like a
+disused garment.
+
+Then we began to talk, and the mystery deepened. He spoke of a telegram.
+I had never received one! And my telegram? I had never sent one! He
+laughed, and when I said I didn't understand, he said what was the use
+of understanding when knowing was sufficient?
+
+It was all very puzzling, but I was content. There was so much to talk
+of, so many explanations to make and to hear! But in time we came back
+to the telegram. There had been no such thing!
+
+He laughed. "I have it here," he said, putting his hand on his
+coat-pocket.
+
+"Show it to me," I pleaded.
+
+Never; it was his, and his alone.
+
+"But nothing is yours now that is not mine," I urged, "at least, if you
+have asked me to marry you."
+
+"Betty," he said, "I quite forgot. I came home for the express purpose
+of doing so. I have thought and dreamed of nothing else, all through the
+long marches in Africa; all the way home I have thought of that and of
+your answer. Betty, will you marry me?"
+
+"I shall be delighted, Captain Buchanan. But where is my telegram to
+you, your telegram to me?"
+
+"It. I think Nannie must have one."
+
+"And did she answer it? Oh, what did she say?"
+
+"Never mind; she said exactly the right thing. Don't let's discuss
+Nannie's telegram when we have to make up for the silence of years!
+O Betty! shall I wake up?"
+
+A little later he said, "Tell me, did you care that night at the
+Frasers'?"
+
+I said I never remembered a time when I didn't care.
+
+"O Betty! if only you hadn't been so proud!"
+
+"Or you so horribly ununderstandable!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+"You wonderful Nannie," I said later, as I sat at her feet, "how did you
+do it?"
+
+"Quite easily," said Nannie. "When I saw that you must go to Hames, as
+of course you had to, I thought to myself, I'll wait! Years ago my lady
+said to me, I Nannie, don't let my child throw away her own chance of
+happiness. I feel that a day may come when she will be called upon to
+make a sacrifice, and she will make it, regardless of her own feelings.
+You were always giving up your toys and things to the boys; that's what
+made your mother think of it. The day she spoke of came the morning the
+telegram came from Hames. I had been waiting and waiting so as to be
+sure to do what your mother told me, and the day came. You see, I saw
+the paper, and I knew!"
+
+"How, Nannie? No one knew, I thought."
+
+"Ah, nannies know things; much use they'd be in this world if they
+didn't? I know lots of things I'm not supposed to! Well, I waited, and
+no telegram came from him that day. There were all sorts of things about
+him in the evening paper, being a hero and a lion and all those sort of
+things. Then the next day the telegram came. The ship had been late; you
+never can tell with ships. Leave ships to sailors, I say. Well, I opened
+the telegram. It said, 'Will you see me if I come straight to you?' or
+some such words, and I answered it."
+
+"What did you say, Nannie?"
+
+"I don't see that that matters. There's nothing in words, and I'm no
+scholar."
+
+"Nannie dear, it does matter. It meant everything in the world to me. If
+only you knew how happy I am, how ridiculously happy."
+
+"It's all right, then. I've done what she said." A rapturous smile
+illuminated her old face.
+
+"All right, Nannie?"
+
+Only a hug can express some things. Nannie straightened her cap. "Well,
+then," she said, drawing herself up, "I couldn't do it for sixpence,
+it cost ninepence halfpenny. I said, 'Come. Been waiting for you for
+years.'"
+
+"Nannie!" I exclaimed.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Professional Aunt, by Mary C.E. Wemyss
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