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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Professional Aunt, by Mary C.E. Wemyss
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+Title: The Professional Aunt
+
+Author: Mary C.E. Wemyss
+
+Release Date: May, 2004  [EBook #5736]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PROFESSIONAL AUNT ***
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was 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, bemuse 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 crèche, 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 if. 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; be 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, m any 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 a matter of great anxiety to me, and I know
+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 décolleté.  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 bad
+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!  0 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.
+
+"0 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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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