



Produced by Sean Pobuda








THE PROFESSIONAL AUNT

By Mary C. E. Wemyss




Chapter I


A boy's profession is not infrequently chosen for him by his
parents, which perhaps accounts for the curious fact that the shrewd,
business-like member of a family often becomes a painter, while the
artistic, unpractical one becomes a member of the Stock Exchange, in
course of time, naturally.

My profession was forced upon me, to begin with, by my sisters-in-law,
and in the subsequent and natural order of things by their children--my
nephews and nieces.

Zerlina says it is the duty of one woman in every family to be an aunt.
By that she means of course a professional aunt. She says she does not
understand the longing on the part of unattached females--the expression
is hers, not mine--for a larger sphere of usefulness than that which
aunt hood offers. She considers that it affords full scope for the
energies of any reasonably constituted woman; and no doubt, if the
professional aunt was all that Zerlina says she should be, she would
have her time fully occupied in the discharging of her duties.

Zerlina cannot see that it is not exactly a position of a woman's own
choosing, although under strong pressure she has been known to admit
that there have been cases in which women have been made aunts whether
they would or no; and she thinks it is perhaps by way of protest against
such usage that they so shamefully neglect their duties in that walk
of life to which their bothers and sister-in-law have seen fit to call
them.

Of course, when an aunt marries, she loses at once all the perfecting
of the properly constituted aunt; and that is a thing to be seriously
considered. Is she wise in leaving a profession for which all her
sisters-in-law think she is admirably fitted, for one which the most
experienced pronounce a lottery?

This is all of course written from Zerlina's point of view. She requires
of a professional aunt many things. She must, to begin with, remember
the birthdays of all her nephews and nieces, of Zerlina's children
in particular. If she remembers their birthdays, it stand to reason,
Zerlina's reason, that the sequence of thought is--presents.

The really successful aunt knows the particular taste of each nephew and
niece. She knows, moreover, the exact moment at which the taste changes
from a love for woolly rabbits to a passion for steam engines. Instinct
tells her at what age a child maybe promoted, with safety, from wool to
paint, and she knows the critical moment in a boy's life when a Bible
should be bestowed. It usually, or perhaps I should say my experience is
that it usually, follows the first knife, an ordinary two-bladed knife,
and comes the birthday before a knife--"with things in it." The real
boy must have a knife with things in it: a corkscrew,--I wonder why a
corkscrew?--a buttonhook, a thing to take stones out of horses' hoofs,
a thing to mend traces with--I know I am ignorant of the technical
terms--but the hardest-hearted shop-assistant will never fail to help a
professional aunt in the choice of a knife, unless by chance he should
be unhappy enough never to have been a boy, and such cases are rare.

I used often to wonder why boys wanted all these things. Now I know,
because I asked Dick and he said, "You see, Aunt Woggles, I use them for
other things." I am not sure that most of us don't do the same thing
with many of our most cherished possessions in life.

As regards steam-engines Zerlina lays down a distinct law. They must
never burst--that is an injury no sister-in-law would ever forgive--and
paint must never come off. If Zerlina had known and loved the taste of
crimson lake in the days of her youth, she would never draw so hard and
fast a line.

From the earliest moment in a baby's career, the professional aunt takes
upon herself serious responsibilities. She may not, for instance, like
any ordinary aunt, pass the baby in his perambulator, out walking. Any
other aunt may, with perfect propriety, say, "Hullo, duckie, where's
auntie?" and pass on. She knows the danger of stopping, and seeks to
avoid it. Not so the professional aunt. She realizes the danger and
faces it. She knows she will have to wait, for the sake of the child's
character, until he shall choose to say, "Ta-ta."

He will probably, if he is a healthy child, say everything he knows
but that. He will go through his limited vocabulary in a pathetically
obliging manner, making the most beautiful "moo-moos" and
"quack-quacks," but he will not say, "Ta-ta." Why should he? On
persuasion, and more especially if the interview should take place at
a street-corner on a windy March day, he will repeat the "moo-moos" and
"quack-quacks" even more successfully than before, and he will wonder
in what way they fall short of perfection, since he earns no praise. He
likes to be rewarded with, "Kevver boy." We all do, just as a matter of
form, if nothing else. Surely ordinary politeness demands it.

He will not say, "Ta-ta," though. Who knows but what it is innate
politeness on his part and his way of saying, "Oh, don't go! What a
flying visit!"

However, the professional aunt cannot be sure of this, although she can
guess; so she must wait patiently, for the sake of Baby's morals and
nurse's feelings, until he does say, "Ta-ta." We may suppose that he
at last loses his temper and says it, meaning, no doubt, "For goodness
sake, go!" if not something stronger. The nurse is satisfied, the aunt
is released, and the conscientious objector is wheeled away.

Besides ministering to the soul of a baby the aunt must tend to its
bodily needs, and for this reason she must be a good needlewoman.

Before the arrival of the first nephew or niece, when she is very
unprofessional, she will hastily put her work under the sofa or behind
the cushion when any one comes into the room. As she grows older and
more professional, and the nephews and nieces become more numerous, she
will give up hiding her work. People who are intimately connected with
the family will show no surprise, and to inquisitive strangers, unless
she is very religious, she can murmur something about a creche, so long,
of course, as Zerlina is not there.

The really successful aunt, one who is at the top of her profession,
can perfectly well be trusted to take all the children to the Zoo alone;
that is to say, without a nurse, and of course without the mother. The
mother knows how pleased and gratified an aunt feels on being given the
entire charge of the children. The nurse is gratified too; in fact
every one is pleased, with perhaps the exception of the aunt. But it is
against professional etiquette for her to say so. She only wonders why
mothers think a privilege they hold so lightly--taking the children
to the Zoo--should be so esteemed by other women. But as the old
story goes, "Hush, darling, hush, the doctor knows best," so must we
say,--"Mothers know best."

Another qualification in a professional aunt, desirable if not
indispensable, is tact. If she should be possessed of ever so little, it
will save her a considerable amount of bother. She won't, in a moment of
mental aberration, praise dark-eyed children to Zerlina, whose children
have blue eyes. Should she do so, by some unlucky chance, it would take
several expeditions to the Zoo, and probably one to Kew, before things
were as they were. If Zerlina, however, should, by the expedition of
the aunt and children to Kew, be enabled to do something she very much
wanted to do, and couldn't, because the nurse's father was ill, and the
nursery-maid anemic, the little misunderstanding will have disappeared
by the time the aunt returns from Kew, and Zerlina will say, after
carefully counting the children,--it is this mathematical tendency
in mothers that hurts an aunt,--"I do trust you implicitly with the
children, dear. You know that; it isn't every one I could trust; you are
so capable! I wish I were, but one can't be everything. Of course you
don't understand a mother's feelings."

I sometimes wonder why Zerlina always says this to me. I have never
pretended to be anything but an aunt.

But to return to my profession. As the children grow older the duties of
the aunt become more arduous. For the benefit of schoolboy nephews with
exeats, she must have an intimate acquaintance with the Hippodrome, any
exhibition going, every place of instruction, of a kind, or amusement.
She must be thoroughly up in matinees, and know what plays are
frightfully exciting, and she must have a nice taste in sweets. She need
not necessarily eat them; it is perhaps better if she does not. But she
must know where the very best are to be procured. She must never get
tired. She must love driving in hansoms and going on the top of 'buses.
She must know where the white ones go, and where the red ones don't,
although a mistake on her part is readily forgiven, if it prolongs the
drive without curtailing a performance of any kind. This requires great
experience. She must set aside, moreover, a goodly sum every year for
professional expenses.

The foregoing are a few of the qualifications which Zerlina thinks
essential in aunts. There are others, and the greatest of them is love.
Zerlina forgot to mention that.




Chapter II


But Diana! That is another story. Open the windows wide, let in the
fresh air, the whispering of trees, the song of the birds, and all that
is good and beautiful in nature. The very thought of Diana is sunshine.
She is as God meant us to be, happy and good, believing in the goodness
of others, slow to find evil in them, quick to forgive it, infinitely
pitiful of the sorrows of the suffering. This is Diana, and she has
three children, Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Allah be praised!

You do not imagine that I dislike Zerlina, do you? I should be sorry to
give that impression. But a professional aunt must be above all things
absolutely straightforward and truthful.

I had been engaged for weeks to go to Hames for the first shoot, and an
urgent telegram from Zerlina, followed by a feverish letter, failed to
move me from my purpose. The telegram, by the way, ran as follows: "Can
you Tuesday for fortnight. Do. Urgent. ZERLINA." I wondered why Zerlina
elected to leave out "come." If I had been strictly economizing, I
should have saved on the "do." The letter followed in due course of
time:--

Dear Betty, I have just sent a wire in frantic haste asking you to come
[that was exactly what she had not done] on Tuesday for a fortnight.
I should so much like you to see something of the children, and Baby
really is very fascinating. She is such a fat child, much fatter than
Muriel's baby, who is six months older. The fact is, Jim is rather run
down; nothing much, of course, but I think a change would do him good,
and the Staveleys have asked us to go to them, and I don't like to
refuse, and we thought it would be such a good opportunity to have my
bedroom re-papered and painted. I don't believe you would smell the
paint, and in any case I believe there is some new kind of paint which
smells delicious, like stephanotis, I am told, so I will order that. I
would not ask you to come just as we are going away, because I should
like to be at home to see you, but I could go away so happily if you
were with the children; I often think for a woman without children,
you are so wonderfully understanding, about children, I mean. You could
manage nurse, too, I am sure. She is in one of her moods just now, and I
feel I must get away from all worries for a little.

Yours,

ZERLINA

P. S.--Jim is so well, and would send his love if he were here.

I telegraphed back, of course, directly I got Zerlina's telegram,
saying I could not come, and answered the letter at leisure. It is as
a sister-in-law in relation to the aunt that Diana particularly shines.
This aunt she looks upon as something more than useful, and asks her
to stay at other times than when the children have measles, and
whooping-cough, or the bedroom is to be re-papered. Zerlina perhaps is
unfortunate. She says, "Have you ever noticed how the children always
have something when you come to stay?" Zerlina is quite pretty when she
puts her head on one side. I answer, "Yes, Zerlina, I have noticed it
curiously enough," but I do not say that I suspect that at the very
first sound of a cough, at the very first appearance of a rash, this
aunt is urged to come and stay.

Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty,
Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But
those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt
wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional
of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or
other. A smile is enough.

So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep
down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. Sara is of all babes in the
world the most fascinating, say sisters-in-law other than Diana what
they will. As a tribute to this fascination, the largest white rabbit,
woolly to a degree undreamed of--at least I hoped so--in Sara's world,
was carefully packed in my box, wrapped cunningly in tissue-paper, and
guarded on all sides by clothing of a soft description. I have known a
chiffon skirt put to strange uses in the interests of Sara.

I found the carriage waiting for me, and was touched to see that Croft,
the old coachman, had come to meet me himself. It is an honor he does
the family with perhaps two or three exceptions. When he comes to meet
me, there is a regular program to be gone through. It varies only in a
very slight degree and begins like this:--

I say, "Well, Croft, it is very nice to see you," and he says, "The same
to you, miss, and many of them." He then begins to "riminize"; the word
is his own. He begins with the auspicious day on which I was born, and
describes how he himself went to fetch the doctor in the dead of the
night. He describes minutely his costume and the part the elements
played on the occasion; they were evidently very much upset. He then
goes on to say how he held me on my first pony, and taught me to ride
and drive. Having finally certificated me as competent to drive a pair
of horses under any circumstances, I ask how the children are, Sara in
particular. Here Croft looks heavenward, and says she looks a picture,
and adds that she looks very like me. The footman knows that here the
program is at an end, Croft having no greater praise to bestow on mortal
woman, and he opens the carriage door and I get in.

Diana knows what it is to travel t he distance of three miles in the
suffocating embraces of Hugh and Betty; otherwise she would probably
have sent the children to meet me.

The smell of the brougham brought my childhood vividly back to me. I
shut my eyes and instinctively put out my hand; and that hand that was
always held out to us as children took mine in its loving clasp, and I
was a child again, home from a visit, so glad to feel that hand again
and to see that mother from whom it was agony to be parted, for even a
short space of time.




Chapter III


When I arrived at Hames, Diana, tall, fair, and beautiful as a Diana
should be, was on the doorstep to meet me. Diana, by the way, had been
christened "Diana Elizabeth," in case she should have turned out short
and dumpy and, by some miraculous chance, dark. I looked for Sara in the
tail of Diana's gown,--I am afraid this is a literary license, as Diana
does not wear tails to her gowns in the country as a rule,--but Sara was
not there.

"She is not there," said Diana. "The children are in the wildest state
of excitement, and will you faithfully promise to go up and see them
directly you have had tea?"

I would willingly have gone then and there, and murmured something about
my box, and Diana said she hoped I had not brought them anything.

"Oh! nothing," I said; "only the smallest things possible"; knowing all
the time that the woolly rabbit was, of its kind, unrivaled. But these
are professional expenses, and what I spend does not afterwards give
me a moment's worry. I have seen David, on the other hand, speechlessly
miserable after buying a mezzotint, for the time being only, of course;
the joy cometh in the morning, when Diana proves to him that it was the
only thing to do, and that it was really quite wonderful, the way in
which he was led to buy it. He had had no idea of doing so. Not the
slightest! And yet something within him urged him to buy it. Absolutely
urged him!

Then, Diana said, it was clearly meant. If a man deliberately set out
on a fine morning, bent on spending more than he could afford, then--!
Diana's "then" is always so comforting.

I am so afraid you will spoil the children, she said; "they expect
presents, which is so dreadful. Hugh bet sixpence at lunch that you
would bring him something, and he said to poor Mr. Hardy, You didn't."

"But he will next time, Diana," I said.

"Of course he will; that is the dreadful part of it."

It is right that Diana should feel like that. A mother's point of view
and another's, an aunt's, for instance, are totally different things,
and I told Diana that, while fully appreciating her anxieties regarding
the characters of her children, considered that to destroy a child's
faith in an aunt was little short of criminal. But I promised that the
next time I came I would, perhaps, not bring them anything. "But I shall
give them fair warning."

Diana admitted the justice of this, and she said, with a sigh of relief,
"I can't bear the children to be disappointed; a disappointed Sara is--"

"Diana," I interrupted, "is it wise to begin Saraing at this time of
day?"

In reality the woolly rabbit was tugging at my heartstrings and
clamoring to be unpacked. After a hurried tea, which I was obliged to
have for the sake of Bindon's feelings, I went upstairs, resolved to
disinter at all costs, without delay, the rabbit. I felt great anxiety
lest in transit the machinery which made the rabbit squeak in a way that
surely no rabbit, mechanical or otherwise,--particularly the otherwise,
I hoped,--had ever squeaked before, might be impaired; happily it was
not.

Having carefully shut the door and silenced the attendant housemaid, I
took the precaution of burying the rabbit partially under the eider-down
quilt before testing the squeak, so that no noise should reach the
children. I am afraid I "mothered" the squeak of that rabbit if I
imagined it could reach anywhere so far; it was in reality such a very
small one. But such as it was, it was perfect, in spite of the deadening
effect of the quilt, and I pictured Sara's dimples dimpling. How she
would love it! The treasure was carefully wrapped up again, and I tried
hard to make it look like anything rather than a rabbit, in case Sara
should try, by feeling it, to discover its nature.

Jane, the housemaid, said that no one could tell, no matter how much
they tried; if they tried all day, they wouldn't, that she knew for
sure; which was very consoling.

I then examined Hugh's train and Betty's cooking-stove, and found them
intact, with, the exception of a saucepan lid. This, after a search,
we found under the wardrobe. Why do things always go under things? Jane
didn't know--she only knew they did. Then I opened the door and called.

Suddenly I heard a noise unearthly in its shrillness: it was Hugh
calling his Aunt Woggles. He threw himself into my arms, keeping one
eye, I could not help noticing, on the parcels. During the hug, which
gave him plenty of time to make up his mind, he evidently decided
which was for him; for he relaxed his hold and went to the table by the
window, on which the parcels lay, whistling in as careless a manner as a
boy bursting with excitement could do. First of all he stood on one leg,
then on the other, and looked knowingly at me out of the corner of his
eye. He was too honest to pretend that he thought the parcel was for
some other boy, since there was no other. When the excitement became
more than he could bear, he sang in a sing-song voice, "I see it, I see
it!"

"Open it, then," I said, which he proceeded to do with great energy, if
with little success.

"I b'lieve it's a knife with things in it," he said.

My heart sank. "Oh, it's much too big for a knife, Hugh," I replied.

"I 'spect it is, all the same," he said with a nod; "you've made it big
on purpose; I positively know you have."

At last it was opened, and I said, aunt-like, "Do you like it, Hugh?"

"Awfully, thanks." Then he added a little wistfully, "Tommy's got a
knife with things in it, a button'ook."

Perhaps he saw I looked disappointed, for he added magnanimously, "I
like trains next best, Aunt Woggles; only you see I didn't exactly pray
for a train, that's why. What's Betty's?"

"Betty must open it herself."

"Don't you suppose," he said, "that she would like me to open it for
her, because it is a hard thing opening parcels--and Betty says I may
always open all her parcels when she is out."

"Hugh!" I exclaimed.

He rushed to the door. "Come on, Betty," he shouted. "Aunt Woggles wants
you."

If Betty's entrance was less tempestuous than Hugh's, her embrace was
not less ecstatic. She put her arms round my neck and took her legs off
the ground,--a quite simple process, and known to most aunts, I expect.
The ultimate result would, no doubt, be strangulation. No one knows, of
course, but among aunts it is a very general belief. Unlike Hugh, Betty
kept her eyes religiously away from parcels, and she got very pink when
I drew her attention to the very nobly one which was hers. Hugh stood
by, urging her to open it, and offering to help her; but this Betty
would not allow, and she opened it, her lips trembling with excitement.

"Is it for my very own?" she whispered.

"Absolutely for your very own, Betty," I answered.

"Oh!" said Betty. "Hugh, it's all for my very, very own; Aunt Woggles
says so; but you may play with it when you are very good."

This in Hugh's eyes seemed so remote a contingency as to be scarcely
worth consideration.

When the cooking-stove stood revealed in all its glory, Betty was silent
for a moment; then she said in a voice choked with emotion, "I shall
cook dinners for you, all for your very own self--nobody else."

My heart sank. "You will eat the things, won't you?" she asked, "if I
make proper things, just like real things?"

"Of course," I said. "Where's Sara?"

"She wouldn't have her face washed," said Betty, "so she's waiting till
she's good."

Poor Sara! A strict disciplinarian is Betty!

The regeneration of Sara was evidently a matter of moments only, for
the words were hardly out of Betty's mouth when Sara, in all her clean,
delicious dumpiness, appeared in the doorway. If there is one thing more
delicious than a grubby Sara, it is a clean Sara. Sara after gardening
is delicious, but Sara clean is assuredly the cleanest thing on God's
earth. I have never seen a child look so new, and so straight out of
tissue-paper, as Sara can look. She stared solemnly at her Aunt Woggles,
and then proceeded to walk away in the opposite direction, which was an
invitation on her part to me to follow and snatch her up in my arms. She
bore the hug stoically for a reasonable time, and then said, "Oo 'urt."

I realized, with the agony of remorse, that a very large aunt can by
means of a brooch inflict exquisite torture on a very small niece.

She wriggled herself free and began to rearrange her ruffled garments.
"Yaya's got noo soos," she announced; "ved vuns."

"No, blue, darling," I said.

"Ved," said Sara.

"No, sweetest, blue," I repeated in a somewhat professional but wholly
affectionate manner.

"Ved," said Sara with great decision; so I gave it up.

"Sara always thinks blue is red," said Betty; "don't you, darling?"

"No, boo," replied Sara; so the matter dropped.

"Oo's tummin' to see Yaya's toys," said Sara.

"Am I, darling? When?"

"Now."

"But Aunt Woggles has got something for you," I said in a triumphant
voice.

Sara showed no interest and pulled me by the hand toward the door.

"Hand me that, Betty," I said, pointing to the parcel on the table.

Betty handed it to me.

"Here, Sara," I said, "I have got a darling white rabbit for you! Sara! A
bunny!"

"Yaya's got a blush upstairs, a lubbly blush," she said, disdaining even
to look at the parcel. I held it toward her, undid it, I squeaked the
squeak, I called the rabbit endearing names; but to no purpose. Sara
looked the other way. A look I at last persuaded her to bestow upon the
rabbit; but she gazed at its charms, unmoved.

"Yaya doesn't yike nasty bunnies, only nice blushes," she said.

"It's a hearth-brush dressed up," whispered Betty, "and it's dressed up
in my dolly's cape, at least in one of my dolly's capes; she loves it.
Aunt Woggles, do you think it is a good thing to make hearth-brushes say
their prayers? Sara does."

I followed Sara disconsolately to the nursery and was shown the beauties
of the "lubbly blush."

Nannie bemoaned her darling's taste, and the nursery-maid blushed for
very shame.

"Not but what it's quite clean, miss," Nannie said; "it's been
thoroughly washed in carbolic."

Meanwhile Sara was rocking herself backward and forward in a manner
truly maternal and singing her version of "Jesus Tender" to her "lubbly
blush."

"I thought she would love the rabbit," I said, and Nannie, by way of
consolation, assured me that there was really nothing Sara loved so
much as a rabbit. I suppose Nannie knew, and that it was only another
instance of the folly of judging from appearances.

"You will love your bunny, won't you, darling?" said Nannie; "nice
bunny!"

"Nasty bunny," said Sara with great decision.

"That's naughty, baby," said Nannie; "nice bunny!"

"Naughty bunny," said Sara, "vake Yaya's yubbly vitty blush." And she
resumed her singing with religious fervor.

Nannie was really quite upset, and apologized for her charge. I accepted
the apology and resolved then and there to send the despised rabbit
to the Children's Hospital by the next post. Have you ever given a
toy-balloon to a child, and had the child say, "Balloons don't amuse?" I
have.

Nannie then, by way of consolation, suggested that Sara should say her
prayers at my knee. It was the greatest compliment she could pay
any one. Sara consented after much pressure, and she knelt down and
proceeded to pack up her face. No other word to my mind describes the
process. First of all she shut her eyes tight. To keep them tight seemed
to require a great physical effort; this was done by tightly screwing
up her nose. Next she proceeded to gather her eyebrows into the smallest
possible compass, and then she drew a deep breath, folded her small
hands, and started off at a terrific pace, "Gaw bess parver yan muvver
yan nannie yan hughyan betty yan dicky an aunt woggles yan ellen yan
emma yan croft--yan blusby yan all ve vitty children yan make dem velly
good boys yan make my nastyole bunnyagoodgirl. May Yaya get up?"

"Not yet, baby, think," said Nannie.

Sara thought, and then with a fresh access of solemnity repeated
an entirely new version of the Lord's Prayer. Nannie understood it
evidently, for at a point quite unintelligible to me, Nannie said, "Good
girl!" and Sara jumped up.

Nannie told me that nothing would induce Sara to pray that she might
be made good. She was always very ready to make such petitions on the
behalf of Betty and Hugh, but for herself, no. She is not like Betty,
who at her age prayed, "Dear God, please make me a good little girl, but
if you can't manage it, don't bother about it; Nannie will soon do it."

Difficult and tedious as the task may have appeared to Betty, I think
it was assuredly within the power of God to make her good without the
intervention of Nannie. Dear Betty!

Sara was then put to bed, and while Nannie brushed her hair, Sara
brushed the hearth-brush's hair. Sara was very anxious to have it in her
bath with her, but here Nannie was firm.

Later the hearth-brush was dressed in a nightgown and laid beside Sara
in her little bed. The last thing she did before going to sleep
was to gaze at her darling "blush" with rapture and say,
"Nasty--'ollid--bunny!"

Her eyelashes fluttered and then gently fell on her cheek, as a
butterfly hovers and then settles on the petal of a rose.

"Leave it here, miss," said Nannie; "she'll see it when she wakes."

I left the despised bunny and went to dress for dinner. Betty was
waiting for me outside. "Is the cooking-stove for my very own self, Aunt
Woggles?"

"Absolutely, Betty. Why?"

"Only because Hugh wondered if it wasn't or him, too. He only wondered,
and I said I didn't suppose one present could be for two people, because
then it wouldn't be such a very real present, would it?"

I said, "Of course not"; and I told her the story of the two men who
owned one elephant, and one man said to the other: "I don't know what
you are going to do with your half; I am going to shoot mine!"

"And did he, Aunt Woggles?" asked Betty, her eyes wide with horror.

"I wonder," I said. "I'll race you to the end of the passage."

"I won," cried Betty. "No, we both of us did," she added, slipping her
hand into mine.

That evening Diana told me that a few days before, she had heard the
following conversation between Hugh and Betty:

"I am going to shoot my cock."

"Hugh!" said Betty, "don't, it's a darlin' cock."

"But it doesn't lay eggs," said Hugh.

"I don't think cocks are supposed to lay eggs," said Betty thoughtfully.

"Well, I don't see why they shouldn't," said Hugh; "widowers have
children."




Chapter IV


Suppose all aunts, that is to say, all professional aunt, know what it
is to be visited at seven o'clock in the morning by nephews and nieces,
fresh, vigorous, and rosy after a night's rest. Fresh, and oh! so
vigorous and deliciously rosy were Hugh and Betty when they appeared at
my bedside at seven o'clock the next morning.

"Hullo!" said Hugh, "we've come. May we get into your bed? I'll get up
steam and take a long run and jump in. Shall I?"

I braced myself up for the shock. There is no need to go through the
morning's program; I suppose every aunt knows it. Bears, camel-rides,
robbers, and various other things, all of a distinctly energetic nature.
At half past seven-you see it doesn't take long, any aunt can bear half
an hour--Nannie appeared, carrying a deliciously rosy Sara with her hair
done on the top, which makes her more than ever fascinating; and in
her arms she carried her bunny--Sara's arms, I mean, of course. "Nice
bunny," she said.

"Who gave you your bunny?" I asked.

"Jesus!" said Sara, triumphantly nodding her head and opening her eyes
very wide. "Jesus makes all ve bunnies, and all ve vitty dickey birds,
and all ve vitty fowers, and all ve big fowers and all ve ponge cakes,
and Yaya."

"And what is Sara going to do with her bunny?" I asked.

"Vuv it," she said with ecstasy.

"Shall I leave her?" asked Nannie.

"What a foolish question, Nannie!" I said. "Could any one send away a
blue dressing-be-gowned Sara?"

"And shall I take the others, miss?"

"Do," I replied.

They went and left me in sole possession of Sara.

"Shall I tell Sara a story?" I said. She nodded her head.

"A storlie all about bunnies."

So I began, "Once upon a time there was a big bunny."

"A vitty bunny," said Sara.

"A little bunny," I said. "Once upon a time there was a little bunny."

"A velly, velly vitty bunny," said Sara.

"Once upon a time there was a very, very little bunny," I repeated,
emphasizing the "very, very little," as Sara had done. She cuddled into
the bedclothes, evidently quite satisfied with the beginning as it now
stood. "And the very, very little bunny lived in a nice hole--"

"A nice bed," said Sara, "a velly nice bed and not in a vitty bed, but
in a velly big bed, a velly, velly big bed with Aunt Woggles."

"In a nice big bed with Aunt Woggles," I said, "and he was a very good
little bunny."

At this Sara rose in the bed and looked at me very severely.

"Did he say his palayers eberly day?" she asked.

"No, not prayers, darling. Bunnies don't say prayers; children say
prayers."

"Naughty bunnies!" said Sara with great severity.

Dreading a religious discussion, which Sara loves, I proposed changing
the story to "The Three Bears." She acquiesced with jumps of joy up and
down, just where one would not choose to be jumped upon, and said, "Ve
felee belairs."

Here I fared no better: my version of the story was so hopelessly wrong,
and I received such crushing correction at the hands of Sara, that I
was glad to relinquish my office of story-teller and suggested that she
should tell a story instead.

This was evidently what she had wanted to do all along, for she began at
once. She tells a story very much as she says her prayers, at the same
terrific pace certainly. First of all she swallowed and took a deep
breath, then she began, "Vunce there was a vitty blush--and not a bad
nasty blush--it said its palayers ebery morning an nannie said good
girly an then the blush vent to sleep in a vitty bed with Yaya."

"Go slower, darling," I said. "Aunt Woggles can't quite understand."

"Yan--ven--Yaya--voke up ve vitty--belush said, 'Good-morning,' yan Yaya
said, 'Good-morning,' yan it was a nice bunny yan not a nasty bunny any
more."

Here Sara's thoughts were distracted, and the story ended abruptly for
want of breath, or possibly of story. She refused to go on, and when
pressed said with great decision, "Dey's all dead."

She then had her share of camel-rides and bears, and by the time Nannie
came I began to feel that I had earned my breakfast. I was one of the
first down, and Bindon was evidently waiting for me, because as I went
into the dining-room he took up his position behind a certain chair,
which action on his part plainly indicated that I was to sit there.
I wondered why. Could it be that I had arrived at the age when it is
advisable for a woman to sit back to the light at breakfast? Was this
only another instance of Bindon's devotion to us all? That the credit of
the family is paramount in his mind, I know! All this flashed through
my mind, but I saw a moment later that it was not of my complexion that
Bindon thought, for on a plate before the chair behind which he stood,
lay a small dark gray wad about the size of a five-shilling piece. I
hesitated, and Bindon said in an undertone, "Miss Betty made it." Not a
muscle of his face moved.

I sat down and gazed at the awful result of my present to Betty.
The--what shall I call it?--was gray, as I said before; it had a
crisscross pattern on it, deeply indented, and snugly sunk in the middle
of it was a currant. I sighed. My duty as a professional aunt was clear:
had I not in a moment of weakness said I would eat anything Betty made,
provided it was a proper thing? Had I here a loophole of escape? No, it
was certainly, according to Betty's lights, a most proper thing. But why
does dough, in the hands of the cleanest child, become dark gray?

Bindon, having done his duty by Betty, and not being able on this
occasion to do it by both of us, made no further explanation. Like the
first step, it is no doubt the first bite that costs most dearly; and
while I was pondering whether to take two bites or swallow it whole, Mr.
Dudley came in and sat down opposite me. He is a young man who thinks
that no woman he doesn't know can be worth knowing. When by force of
circumstances he comes to know a fresh one, he always tells her he feels
as if he had known her all her life, and talks of a previous existence,
and so gets over a difficulty. I felt that it was a tribute to Diana
that he treated me so kindly, and I earned his gratitude and commanded
his respect by refusing food at his hands. I said I liked helping myself
at breakfast. He insisted, however, on passing me the toast. This I felt
was apart from Diana altogether.

After a few moments the little gray wad attracted his attention, and his
eyebrows expressed a wish to know what it was.

"Betty made it," I said.

"And what is it?"

"I wonder!" I said. "I think it must come under the head of black
bread."

"What are you going to do with it?" he asked.

I answered, "Why, eat it, of course; only I can't make up my mind how.
What should you say, two bites or a swallow?"

His interest was now thoroughly aroused; he had evidently never before
met an aunt professionally. He looked at me solemnly and said, "You are
going to eat that?"

"I am an aunt, you see," said; "a professional aunt."

"A what?" he asked.

"A professional aunt," I answered. "You are an uncle, I suppose."

"I am constantly getting wires to that effect, but I am hanged if I have
ever eaten mud-pies."

"No, that is part of the profession," I said; "you see, I promised
Betty."

Mr. Dudley relapsed into silence. I had given him food for reflection.

Here Betty appeared, "not to eat anything," she carefully explained.
Hugh came next, followed a moment later by Sara, who was beside herself
with excitement, which was centered in the blue ribbon in her hair, to
which she had that morning been promoted. A red curl had become more
rebellious than its fellows, and it was tied up with a blue ribbon, in
the fashion beloved of young mothers. Diana dislikes any reference made
to poodles.

"Yaya's got a ved vimvirn in her har," she announced.

We all expressed the keenest interest and unbounded surprise. One very
well-meaning person put down his knife and fork and said he was too
surprised to eat any more breakfast; whereupon Hugh said, "You needn't
be so very funny, because Sara doesn't understand those sort of jokes."

Whether Sara understood it or not, it seemed to encourage her to further
revelations, and she announced with bated breath, "Yaya's got ved
vimvims in her--" She opened her eyes very wide and nodded very
mysteriously, and was about to suit her actions to her words and
disclose the ribbons in question, when Diana, with a promptitude quite
splendid, administered a banana. Sara ate some with relish, paused, and
said in a loud voice, subdued by banana, "jormalies." She was not going
to be put off with a banana.

Betty was very much shocked, and with a face of virtuous indignation
whispered in my ear, "Sara means-" I hastily stopped Betty because her
whispers are louder than Sara's loudest conversation and very much
more distinct. And after all there is everything in the way a word is
pronounced. Without any context I think "jormalies" might pass anywhere
as a perfectly right and proper word, to be used on any occasion.

Hugh, too, had something to say on the absorbing topic of ribbons,
and on such a subject I thought he might safely be trusted. On what an
unsafe foundation is built the faith of an aunt!

"Aunt Woggles," he said, "has got pink ribbons in her nightie; it's
lovely, and she doesn't do her hair in funny little things like--"

Here David distracted Hugh's attention by telling him an absolute
untruth concerning a fox to be seen out of the window. The first of
April is the only day in the whole year on which the word "fox" won't
take him flying to the window.

Betty, perhaps by way of changing the conversation, said, "You did eat
my cake, didn't you, Aunt Woggles?"

"Of course I did, Betty."

"Don't you believe it," said Mr. Dudley.

"I always believe my Aunt Woggles," said Betty with infinite scorn. "Was
it nice, Aunt Woggles?" Mercifully she didn't wait for an answer, but
continued: "I lost the currant three times, but I found it all right.
I thought I had trodden on it, but I hadn't, because I looked on the
bottom of my shoe and it wasn't there. I did have lots of currants, only
when I dropped them Mungo ate them all up, except this one. He didn't
eat this one because I stopped him. I said, 'Drop it, Mungo!' and he
did. It was a good thing he didn't eat it, wasn't it? I made lines
across, did you see? All across the cake! I made those with a hairpin.
It was a good plan, wasn't it?"

Somehow or other my breakfast had fallen short of my expectations. But
what I had lost in appetite I had perhaps gained in other ways, for I
had until then undoubtedly existed in the mind of Mr. Dudley only under
the shadow of Diana's charming personality. I now took my stand alone,
as the Aunt Woggles who ate mud-pies, I am afraid; but still it is
something to have a separate existence. Is it?




Chapter V


Diana's children are of a distinctly religious turn of mind. I think
most children are, and what wonderful, curious thing their religion
is! Looking back to my own childhood, I remember thinking, or rather
knowing, that the Holy Ghost was a Shetland shawl. We called our shawls
"comforters"; we wore them when we went to parties in the winter. "I will
not leave you comfortless," could mean nothing else. To complete the
illusion, we had in the nursery a picture of the Pentecost, the Holy
Ghost descending in the form of a cloudy substance, not unlike a
Shetland shawl. I was so sure that I was right, that I never thought of
asking any one. When I grew older and told my mother, she said, "But why
didn't you ask me, darling?" forgetting that when a child knows a thing
it never asks; when in doubt it will ask, but not when it knows. It is
a difficult and dangerous thing to shake a child's belief, and a
pity, too. For if we could all believe as simply as a child does, how
different it would make life! If Diana has a fault, it is that she
takes her children too seriously. She thinks it is wrong to tell them,
"Children should be seen and not heard," simply because they have asked
a question she can't answer. Aunts have been known to do it as a last
resource, on occasions of great danger.

Hugh wants to know if God put in the quack before he made the duck. It
is difficult, isn't it, to answer that sort of question?

On another occasion he asked Betty if God was alive. Betty, eager to
instruct, said, "My dear Hugh, God is a Spirit."

"Then we can boil our milk on him." That was a poser for Betty.

Diana was at a loss, too, when Hugh announced his intention of going to
Heaven. She asked him what he would do when he got there. I thought the
question a little unwise at the time. "Oh!" said Hugh, "stroll round
with Jesus, I suppose, and have a shot at the rabbits."

Diana's position was a difficult one. It was this: if she told Hugh
there were no rabbits in Heaven, he wouldn't pray to go there; and if
she said there was no shooting in Heaven, Hugh would know for certain
that his father wouldn't want to go there, and it wouldn't do for Hugh
to think his father didn't want to go to Heaven. It was a difficulty,
but Hugh's Heaven was or is a very real and very happy place to him. It
is strangely like Hames; and isn't the home of every happy child very
near to Heaven? Surely it lies at its very gates, which we could see
if it was not for the mountains which intervene, those beautiful snow
mountains, which foolish grown-ups call clouds.

Diana has come triumphantly out of situations more difficult, and she
will no doubt surmount those connected with the spiritual upbringing of
Hugh, Betty, and Sara.

It is the custom of Diana to read the Bible every morning with her
children, and they resent any deviation from custom.

After breakfast on the particular Sunday over which this shooting-party
extended, Hugh marched through the hall (where most of us were
assembled) with his Bible under his arm, followed by Betty, carrying
a smaller Bible. Hugh's seemed particularly cumbersome. He cast a
reproachful glance at his mother and her guests, and said to Betty,
"I will teach you, darling."

Betty said, "Can you, Hugh?" and he said, "Rather!"

Into the drawing-room he stumped, followed by the impressed Betty.

"You may come, Aunt Woggles," he said, "if you don't talk."

I promised not to talk, and sat down to write letters.

Hugh sat down on the sofa and Betty plumped down beside him. She
carefully arranged her muslin skirts over her long black-stockinged
legs, and then told Hugh to begin.

"What's it going to be about?" she asked.

"All sorts of things," said Hugh grandly. "Perhaps about Adam and
Eve, and Jonah and the whale, and Samson and Elijah. Do you know the
diff'rence between Enoch and Elijah? That's the first thing."

"No, I don't," said Betty reluctantly.

"Well, darling, you must remember the diff'rence is that Enoch only
walked with God, but the carriage was sent for Elijah!"

"Was it a carriage and pair, Hugh?"

"More, I expect."

"What next, Hugh?"

"We'll just look until we find something." And Hugh opened the Bible.

"It's upside down," whispered Betty.

Hugh assumed the expression my spaniel puts on when he meets a dog
bigger than himself--an expression of extreme earnestness of purpose
combined with a desire to look neither to the right nor to the left, but
to get along as fast as he can.

Hugh assumed an immense dignity and looked straight in front of him,
just to show Betty he was thinking and had not heard what she said,
while he turned the Bible round.

"Go on, Hugh," said Betty humbly, feeling it was she who had made the
mistake. How often do men make women feel this!

"Now, Betty," he said, "you must listen properly and not talk, because
it's a proper lesson, just like mother gives us when visitors aren't
here." A pause, then Hugh said in a very solemn voice, "You know,
darling, Jesus would have been born in the manger, but the dog in the
manger wouldn't let him!"

I stole out of the room.

"You don't disturb us, Aunt Woggles," called out Hugh; "you truthfully
don't."

Hugh had evidently told all he knew, for in a few minutes he came out of
the drawing-room and joined us in the hall. "We've done!" he exclaimed;
"we've had our lesson all the same."

"I am sorry, Hugh," said Diana.

He slipped his hand in hers as a sign of forgiveness, and by way of
making matters quite right, I said, "You know, Hugh, mothers must look
after their guests. Their children are always with them, but friends
only occasionally."

Why do aunts interfere? Retribution speedily follows.

"Visitors are mostly always here," said Hugh plaintively. "When you have
children of your own, Aunt Woggles, then--"

"A fox, a fox, Hugh!" cried some one.

He rushed to the window.

"That's two foxes today that weren't there when I looked," said Hugh; "I
shan't look next time."

This was a desperate state of affairs; an attack might come at any time,
and we should have exhausted our ammunition.

"The best thing," said Diana, "is for those who are going to church to
get ready."

Betty and Hugh were of course going; Sara wanted to, but those in
authority deemed it wiser that she should wait till she was older.
This offended her very much, as did any reference to her age. But the
decision was a wise one: she prayed too fervently, she sang too lustily,
and she talked too audibly, to admit of reverent worship on the part of
the younger members of the congregation, and of the older ones, too, I
am afraid.

One memorable Sunday she did go to church, as a great treat; and
when the hymn--"Peace, perfect peace" was given out, a beatific smile
illumined her face, and with her hymn-book upside-down she was preparing
to sing, when Diana said,--whispered rather--You don't know this,
darling."

"Yes, I do, mummy, peace in the valley of Bong."

Betty walked to church with me. "Aunt Woggles," she said, "you know the
gentleman in the Bible who lived inside the whale?"

"Yes, darling," I said, "I do remember." My heart sank at the
difficulties presented by Jonah as gentleman.

"Well," she said, "what dye suppose he did without candles in the dark
passages of the whale?"

Betty evidently pictured the dark passages of the whale to be what
Haines used to be before electric light was installed. The whale, like
a house, must be modernized to meet the requirements of the day. When
Betty starts asking questions, she mercifully quickly follows one with
another, and does not wait for answers. The interior economy of the
whale suggested various trains of thought, and she went skipping along
beside me, or rather in front of me, propounding the most astounding
theories. I was quite glad when Mr. Dudley and Hugh caught us up.

"You did come along fast, old man," said Mr. Dudley.

"It wasn't me, it was you," panted Hugh. "It truthfully was, Aunt
Woggles, and he wasn't going to church at all till I told him you were
going. I'm awfully out of breath because he wanted to catch you up, so
it wasn't me all the time."

I was sorry Hugh and Mr. Dudley had caught us up.

Mr. Dudley murmured something about "Young ruffian," and I felt it my
duty as well as my pleasure to tell Hugh not to talk so much.

"I 'sect you want to sit next my Aunt Woggles, don't you?" said Hugh
to Mr. Dudley; "but you can't, because I said, 'bags I sit next Aunt
Woggles in church' before she came to stay, ever so long before,
before two Christmases ago, I should think it was, or nearly before two
Christmases ago!"

Betty's grasp on my hand tightened, and I returned it with a reassuring
pressure, as much as to say, "There are two sides to every aunt in
church, dear Betty; it is a comfort to know that."

"I may sit next you, mayn't I?"

"Yes, Betty," I said.

"You are very rosy, Aunt Woggles," said Hugh. "Do you love my Aunt
Woggles?" he continued, dancing backward in front of Mr. Dudley.

"Of course he does," I said boldly, taking the bull by the horns.
"Mr. Dudley loves even his enemies, especially on Sundays."

Hugh looked puzzled, and pondered. Before he had come to any definite
conclusion as to how this affected Mr. Dudley's feelings towards me, we
reached the lichgate, where we found the rest of the party awaiting us.
We all separated: Diana took Betty, who gazed at me mournfully, but
was too loyal to her mother to say anything; Hugh gave a series of
triumphant jumps, which added pain to Betty's already disappointed
expression.

In church I found myself allotted to what we call the overflow pew,
which is at right angles to the family pews and in full view of them.
It is the children's favorite pew only, I imagine, because they don't
always sit there. Hugh sat very close to me, and kept on giving little
wriggles and gazing up at me, then at Mr. Dudley, and snuggling closer
to me as if to emphasize the superiority of his position over that of
Mr. Dudley.

"Hugh," I whispered, "you must behave."

"He didn't sit next you, after all," he whispered.

I say whispered, but must explain that Hugh's whisper is a very
far-reaching thing. He loves a victory. I hope that when he grows up he
will be a generous victor. He says he is going to be a dangerous man; I
can believe it.

Betty, the vanquished one, stared solemnly in front of her, not deigning
to notice Hugh's triumph. What pleasure is there to children in sitting
next to some particular person in church? I remember, as a child, it was
a matter of earnest prayer during the week that on Sunday I might sit
next, some particular person in church. "And, O Lord, if it be for my
good, let me sit next the door." A child's religion is a very real thing
to him, and not only a Saturday-to-Monday thing.

I looked at Betty's serious little face and wished that I could for one
moment read her thoughts. Her eyes, such lovely eyes, were fixed on
the preacher's face. What did his sermon convey to her? It was a
particularly uninteresting one, I remember, an appeal on behalf of the
curates' fund. Her eyes never left his face--such solemn, searching,
truthful eyes. I think a child like Betty should not be allowed to go
to church on such occasions, for what is the use of preaching against
matrimony on the one hand, and that, I suppose, is what the moral of
such a sermon should be,--and on the other hand holding up an incentive
to matrimony in the very alluring shape of Betty? For, personally, I
think Betty would be a very wonderful possession for any curate to have.

Hugh was growing restless and I was bearing the brunt of it. Nannie,
feeling for me, leaned over from the back pew and said, "Don't rest your
head on your Aunt Woggles."

"I came to church on purpose to rest my head on my Aunt Woggles's
chest," said Hugh, again in what he calls a whisper. A moment later, he
asked, "Is it done?"

It was, and he jumped up.

"May I sit next you next Sunday, Aunt Woggles?" he said, so soon as we
got outside the church door.

"No, Hugh," I said.

"I bet I do, all the same," he said.

"Aunt Woggles," said Betty, as we walked home, "I collect for the
prevention of children; do you suppose Mr. Dudley would give me a
penny?"

"I am sure he would, darling, but it is the prevention of cruelty to
children--the prevention of cruelty."

"That's such a long thing to say, Aunt Woggles, don't you suppose he
would understand if I did say it a little wrong?"

"Perhaps, darling, but it is always best to say things right."

"Yes, I will, but I was only supposing, supposing I didn't."

At luncheon Diana cautioned Betty against swallowing a fish-bone. "You
might die, darling, if you did."

"Then I shall swallow every single bone I can," announced Betty.

"But, darling," said Diana, "why do you say that? You don't want to die.
You are quite happy, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm very happy, but I want to die, all the same."

"Oh, darling, don't say that," said Diana; "there is a great deal for
you to do in this world before you die."

"Yes, but you see, darling," said Betty, "if I don't die soon, I shall
be too old to sit on Jesus' knee."

Diana is very particular about the children's manners, and Hugh came
face to face with a great difficulty a moment later, over his ginger
beer. "If I don't say I thank you, mother doesn't like it, and if I do
say I thank you, Bindon stops pouring."




Chapter VI


In answer to a really desperate telegram from Zerlina, I left Hames
hurriedly, and arrived at Zerlina's, to find her out and all the
children apparently well. I was shown upstairs into the drawing-room. In
Diana's house I am never "shown" anywhere; however, in Zerlina's I am,
so it is no use discussing that question. The drawing-room into which I
was shown was empty of furniture except for the sofas and chairs which
were arranged round the room against the wall. As Zerlina's room does
not err as a rule on the side of emptiness, I realized that there was
going to be a party. I felt like the child who said, "There's been a
wedding, I smell rice!" One knows these things by instinct.

The butler solemnly informed me that there was going to be a party, and
that Miss Hyacinth would be down in a moment.

I thought it odd that Zerlina should have said nothing about a party;
but then she never says anything about measles, or whooping-cough, or
re-painting rooms, until I am within the doors and unable to escape. I
remembered she had urged me on this occasion to come early. I sat down
on a sofa and sadly fixed my gaze on the parquet floor. How different
had been my arrival at Hames! My conscience smote me. I had no train, no
cooking stove, no woolly rabbit in my box. But then neither was there
a Hugh, Betty, and Sara. At Hames should I have sat in the drawing-room?
Never! Of course I know what some people will say: that it is my fault;
if I had treated the children as I treated Betty, Hugh, and Sara, it
would have made all the difference; but it wouldn't, really. It is, the
mother of the children who makes the difference; it is her attitude to
the aunt which is adopted by the children. If Diana had been out,
the house would have resounded with shrieks for Aunt Woggles. But in
Zerlina's house children never shriek, people never rush to the nursery.
The children are always tidied before they are brought down to see me.

Of course some people will again say, "Quite right"; and it is quite
right that for such people they should be tidied; but do those people
realize what a wall tidiness builds between child and grown-up? Have
they ever thought what a boy feels when his mother comes down to see him
at school and the first thing she does when he comes into the room is
to say that his collar is dirty, or that his hands want washing? At
that moment, perhaps, she lays the first brick in the wall which builds
between mother and son. He is a happy boy and she a blessed mother who
stand always with no wall between them. All a boy demands of his mother
when she comes to see him at school is that she shall behave just
like other people, and that she shall dress properly. If she can be
beautiful, so much the better: it will redound enormously to his credit.
Boys are very sensitive about their belongings, but when praise can
be bestowed they bestow it, as in the case of Tommy, who wrote to his
father, who had been down to the school to play in a match, Fathers
against Sons, "Dear father, you did look odd, but you made the second
biggest score."

While I was pondering over these things, the door opened and my niece
Hyacinth came in.

"Hullo!" she said; "mum's out."

"So I hear," I said; "won't you kiss me?"

"Oh! I forgot," she said, twirling round on one leg and holding out a
cheek to be kissed. "There's going to be a party to it."

"So I see," I said; "what sort of a party?"

"Oh! it's the end-up of the dancing class, four to seven; that's why mum
asked you to come early."

"She isn't in yet?" I asked innocently.

"Oh! she's not coming," said Hyacinth, raising her eyebrows and
laughing; "she always has something to do on dancing days. The Frauleins
get on her nerves. They sit all round the room."

And Hyacinth indicated the position of the Frauleins with a sweep of her
arm.

"What time is it now?" I asked.

"Half past three," she said; "I'm ready."

"I'm not," I said savagely.

I went upstairs, vowing vengeance on Zerlina. I could have shaken
Hyacinth, poor child, and why? Because her legs were too long, or her
skirts too short, or the bow in her hair too large? What a disagreeable,
cross-grained professional aunt I was! Or did I miss the hug Hyacinth
might have given me?

I was only just ready when the children began to arrive. I flew
downstairs and found not only children in every shape and form, but
mothers in big hats and trailing skirts, and Frauleins in small hats and
skirts curtailed, mademoiselles and nannies. The nannies I handed over
to the nursery department, and the mothers and the Frauleins and the
mademoiselles I arranged in a dado round the room, making inappropriate
remarks to each in turn. No surprise was expressed at the absence of
Zerlina.

The children began to dance. There was a particularly painstaking little
boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in
places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the
left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones
from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited her actions to her words by
the uplifting of the leg corresponding to that recommended to Tomus's
consideration, and bringing it down with emphasis on the parquet floor.

By the sudden quickening of leg-action on the part of my painstaking
friend, I knew him to be Tomus, and by that only, so many of the boys
looked as if they might be Tomus. The real Tomus asserted himself
manfully, however, by using the exactly opposite leg to that ordered by
Fraulein. I liked this spirit of independence, and determined to make
friends with him so soon as that dance should be over. I took the
liberty of introducing myself; he made no remark but took me by the hand
and led me out on to the landing, and there he found two chairs in the
orthodox position. Into one of these he wriggled himself by a backward
and upward movement, and I sat in the other. How absurdly easy it is for
a grown-up to sit down! I waited for Thomas to make a remark; I might be
waiting still, if I had not made a beginning. He looked at me under his
eyelashes, and tried not to smile. It was an effort, I could see, and I
could tell just where the dimples would come. When the effort became too
great and the dimples asserted themselves beyond recall, he looked
away and put out a minute portion of his tongue. Having done that, he
subsided into grave self-possession.

I began to feel embarrassed, and asked him how old he was. He smiled.
"Do you like dancing, Thomas?" I said.

He looked away, and every time I addressed him he seemed to retreat
farther into his chair, until I had fears that he would disappear
altogether from my sight. His waist-line seemed to be the
vanishing-point. I made no further effort, and relapsed into silence.
Thomas continued to gaze at me and smile. At last he extended a fat
little hand, uncurled one by one four soft little fingers, and revealed,
lying in his palm, a short screw. It was evidently his greatest
treasure, for the moment.

"Is that for me, Thomas?" I asked. "Nope," he said, shaking his head.

"Is it your very own?"

"Yeth," said Thomas, drawing in his breath. He shut his little hand, put
out his tongue just the smallest bit, and became serious and silent.

"Is it a present?" I asked. Having got so far, it seemed a pity not
to go on. He had done me the greatest honor that a small boy can do a
woman, which, by the way, was what our Nannie said when she told us that
a strange man had proposed to her on a penny steamboat.

Thomas shook his head and said, "Nope."

"Did you find it?" I asked.

He nodded. "I always find fings," he said.

Beyond that I could get nothing out of him. I have not often sat out
with a more embarrassing partner. To be continually stared at and
never spoken to would, I think, make the boldest woman shy. There was
a stolidity about Thomas that promised well for England's future. There
was a steady resistance from attack that was really admirable; but I was
not altogether sorry when Fraulein pounced upon him. As she led him off
I heard him say, "Parties do last a long time, don't they, Leilein?"

Having lost Thomas, I sought a new partner. A tall, fair girl with
wide, gray eyes, a pink-and-white complexion, a beautiful mouth, and a
delicately refined nose, interested me, as I imagine she has continued
to do every one who has met her. She reminded me of spring, with birds
singing and flowers flowering and trees bursting, just as Diana does.
As it was quite the correct thing for girls to dance with one another, I
made so bold as to ask her for a dance. With the timidity of a boy just
out of Etons, or perhaps I should say, of a shy boy just out of Etons, I
approached her. "Right-o," she said, "let's see."

She puckered her penciled eyebrows and studied her program. "The third
after the two next?"

She bowed gravely, and I said, "Thank you." I felt very young and
inexperienced as I returned the bow.

"That's all right," she said. "Where shall I find you? It doesn't
matter, I shall know you again"; and she had the audacity to write on
her program, for I saw her do it, "white dress, red hair."

She was borne off by a triumphant boy, who looked at me as much as to
say, "You're jolly well sold if you think you are going to nab this
dance."

I asked a hungry-looking boy with many freckles who she was. "Oh! that's
Dolly," he said; "she is a flyer, isn't she?"

"Dolly who?" I asked.

"Oh! just Dolly; that does." He looked away, looked back, hesitated,
and swallowed. I, feeling that he perhaps needed the assistance a man
sometimes requires of a woman, encouragement, smiled at him.

"You wouldn't dance this, I suppose?" he said.

"Certainly," I answered.

We danced. He was a nice boy, very much in earnest, very much afraid of
tiring me, very much afraid of letting me go, too shy to stop, until I
suggested it, for which act of consideration he seemed grateful.

He told me he had five brothers, all older than himself; that he never
had new trousers, always the other boys' cut down; that he liked school;
wanted a bicycle more than anything in the world--of his very own, of
course; wanted a pony of his very own; wanted a dog of his very own. He
hadn't anything of his very own.

I said I supposed he thought his eldest brother very lucky.

"Because of the trousers?" he asked.

I said, "Well, yes, I suppose he has the new ones."

"Well," he said, "you see he doesn't. That's the chowse of the whole
thing. He is the eldest, but you see Dick's the biggest, so he gets the
new trousers. It is hard, isn't it?"

I said it was indeed.

"The best of it is," he said, "I am catching jackup. He is in an awful
wax. I shouldn't be surprised if I were bigger than him next holidays.
Do you like dancing? I simply loathe it--not with you, I don't mean I."

He told me many other confidences, and I was really sorry when he
remembered, with an evident pang, that he had to dance with that "rum
little kid over there."

I was quite certain that he would never break a promise. I could picture
him going through life always keeping promises, rashly made, no doubt.
I wondered what he would talk to girls about at dances years
hence--trousers? Hardly. By that time he would have trousers of his very
own, and they would cease, in consequence, to be things of interest.

He would be a soldier--of that I could have no doubt. He was the kind of
boy England wants and can still get, thank God! say pessimists what they
will.

While I was awaiting my Dolly dance, I came upon a small, disconsolate
boy.

"I'm looking for an empty partner," he said.

I captured a passing girl, very small, and they danced away together.
The boy I could see was very energetic, the girl was very small and fat.
As they passed me I heard her say, "I--can't--go--so--fast!"

"Very sorry," said the small boy, "but I must keep up with the music."

Dolly found me. "I think I had better dance gentleman," she said; "I
think I am as tall as you." With a tremendous effort she drew her slim
figure to its full height, and, gazing up into my face she had the
audacity to say, "Yes, I do just look down upon you; anyhow, men
aren't always taller than girls. My cousin says so, and she goes to
dances--heaps--and she is six foot."

We started off, I felt at once, on a perilous course. "You see," she
said, "I had better--steer--because" (bump we went into somebody),
"because--I dance once a week--always" (crash), "sometimes oftener--so
I get--plenty of practice" (bang) "in steering, and that helps. I love
dancing--don't you? Oh, that's all right--it's--only--the stupid--old
mantelpiece--I always go into that--it sticks out so--doesn't it? It is
hard--rather!"

Dolly was a flyer and no mistake. I was brought to a standstill at last
by colliding with Thomas's Fraulein.

"It's all right," said Dolly generously, "you didn't hurt us!"

Fraulein was hurled on to a sofa and made no remark. She gave up
temporarily the management of Thomas's left leg.

"Shall we sit out?" said Dolly. "It is hot, isn't it?"

She fanned herself with a very small program and tossed her hair back
from her face. It was such lovely hair.

"Hair is beastly stuff, isn't it?" she said. "Wouldn't you love to be
a boy? Oh, I promised mother not to say I 'beastly'; that's one of the
things I would like to be a boy for, because boys may do such an awful
lot of things."

I soon found out that Dolly liked boys better than girls.

She loved horses and dogs.

She hated and detested bearing-reins.

She didn't want to come out.

She thought grown-ups silly, except some--

She loved the country and strawberry ice.

She hated dull lessons, and I very soon discovered that there were none
other than dull.

She collected stamps.

She longed to have a pet monkey or a brother, she didn't much mind
which.

At the mention of brothers I looked down at Dolly's slim legs, clothed
in fine black silk stockings, at the valenciennes lace on her muslin
frock, and I imagined that if she had any brothers, the younger ones
would be quite likely to have started life in trousers of their own.
Yes, Dolly looked like it. I learned a great deal from her in the time
it had taken me to get "yeth" and "nope" out of Thomas.

The energetic boy who had been obliged to keep up with the music at all
costs, the little fat girl's in particular, came up to me, and said in
an aggrieved voice, "Miss Daly has spoilt my program; she can't write,
and she has written big D's all over it. Will you write me out a fresh
one?"

Which I, of course, did. Really it was very careless of Miss Daly.

The children danced hard, with intervals for tea and refreshment; and
as seven o'clock struck, there was a transformation scene. With
conscientious punctuality the party-dressed children turned, into little
or big woolen bundles, as the case might be. The last bundle I saw was a
pink woolen one, weeping bitterly. My heart was wrung. The noisy crying
of a child is bad enough, but when it is the soft weeping of a broken
heart, it is unbearable. Of course it was my friend Thomas. I stood on
the staircase unable to do anything, for he was quickly borne from the
arms of Fraulein by a big footman, and no doubt deposited in a brougham
in the outer darkness. Poor Thomas!

I hoped that the right sort of mother would be at home to unroll that
pink bundle, a mother who would pretend that it could not be her darling
who was crying, but a strange little boy with a face quite unknown to
her. Where could he have come from? And so on, until Thomas would be
ashamed to be seen with a strange face, and would smile, and then his
mother would say, "What is it, my darling?" because, of course, it was
her own darling who was crying, and she would never rest till she knew
why.

I went back to the drawing-room quite happy that Thomas should be
unrolled by the right sort of mother, and as I walked across the room,
my foot slipped on something. I looked to see what it was I had trodden
on. It was a short screw, Thomas's precious possession. "That was why
the poor pink bundle was crying!"

"Hyacinth," I said, "who was Thomas?"

"Which one? There was little Thomas and the Thomas who lives a long way
off, and then just plain Thomas."

"I mean the fat little Thomas who danced so hard."

"Oh! that's the little Thomas," said Hyacinth.

"Where does he live?" I asked.

"Oh, quite close; when we go to tea there we walk. He hasn't got a
mother, so there's no drawing-room. She died," added Hyacinth, as if it
was an every-day occurrence that Thomas should be left without a mother,
instead of its being a heart-breaking tragedy. A child with no mother,
no mother to unwrap the pink bundle, no mother to grieve for the screw,
no mother to understand things. Perhaps his mother had been a Diana sort
of mother.

"Oh, Thomas," I thought, "I must send you back your screw." I didn't
care what any one said--he should have it.

If he had had a mother, it wouldn't have mattered, because she would
have known it was a screw he had lost, and she would have known just
what comfort he would have needed; whereas a Fraulein would know nothing
about a screw, beyond the German for it, and the gender, of course. And
of what use is that to a child? It may sound very unconventional, and I
suppose it was so, to go to a strange house and ask for Thomas, and my
only excuse a small screw. But still I went!

I pictured a lonely child in a large house with a Fraulein and a nurse,
perhaps two; those I could face. A tall, sad father I had never thought
of! I am afraid I am not suited for the profession, I am too impulsive.

I rang the bell. The door was opened by a solemn man-servant, who did
not show the surprise he must have felt when I asked for Master Thomas.
Another, still more solemn, showed me into a downstairs room. I refused
to give my name, and a very large, serious Thomas rose from a chair as I
was ushered in, "A lady to see Master Thomas." So my errand was in part
explained, but the part left to tell was by far the most difficult. If
only Thomas had lost anything but a screw! No father could be expected
to know how it had been treasured. Supposing Thomas had been crying
because he had a pain, which sometimes comes to children after tea?
Supposing he hadn't been crying for his screw at all? Supposing he
repudiated all knowledge of it?

But here I was, screw in hand, and my story to tell. I told it. I was
grateful to the tall, sad Thomas for being so solemn, and not even
smiling, when I mentioned the screw. He said he was very grateful for my
kindness, and he went so far as to say he was sure Thomas had valued the
screw.

While some one was coming, for whom he had rung, he told me that when he
had taken Thomas to the Zoo, the only thing which he was really excited
about was the mouse in the elephant's house! Somehow or other that
little story put me at my ease, for it showed that the big Thomas at
least understood in part the mind of a child.

A nurse, not sad-looking I was glad to see, came in answer to the bell,
and the big Thomas asked if the little Thomas had lost a screw? In that
I was disappointed, the best nurse in the world might not know of a
screw. But the big Thomas did not wait to hear; he was sure the little
Thomas had, and he said we were coming upstairs to restore it to him. Of
course I had said by this time that I was Zerlina's sister-in-law.

We went upstairs, I following the tall Thomas, past the drawing-room,
past that bedroom whose door I knew was closed. A mother's bedroom is
nearly always in the same place in a London house, a child blindfolded
could find it, and the handle of a mother's door is always within the
reach of the smallest child; and so easily does it turn, that the door
opens at the slightest pressure of the smallest fingers.

Up we went to Thomas's own bedroom. There in his bed he sat, no longer
crying, but still sad and solemn, with evidences in his face of a sorrow
that rankled. He smiled when he saw me, too much of a gentleman to show
any surprise at seeing me in his bedroom.

"Thomas," I said, "I have brought you back your screw which you lost." I
put it in his outstretched hand, and a smile rippled all over his face.

Suddenly from out the darkness came a stentorian voice, "Right hand,
Tomus!" It was Fraulein! Thomas put out his right hand, and I, putting
aside all convention, gave him a real "Sara hug" for the sake of that
mother whose door was closed. It then began to dawn upon me how very
unconventional it was of me to be hugging a comparatively strange child,
in a perfectly strange house, and I hastily said good-night to the
small Thomas and the big Thomas, nurses and Fraulein, and literally ran
downstairs, followed of course by the big Thomas. At the foot of the
stairs I ran into the arms of Mr. Dudley.

His exclamation of "Aunt Woggles" was involuntary, I felt sure, and he
had every right to visit a sad, tall Mr. Thomas. But I thought Diana
ought to have told me that I was likely to meet him at--Well, a
stranger's house; so how could she? The only thing that consoled me was
that in all probability Mr. Dudley would explain my profession in
life, and that I had a screw loose. Yes, that would exactly explain the
position. Otherwise I didn't exactly know how he could describe me.

Well, Zerlina of course said I was mad. She didn't agree with me that
the screw could not possibly have been sent back in an envelope with a
few words of explanation. She said she would have bought a nice toy for
the child. What's the good of a toy to a child when he has lost a screw
which he found his very own self, any more than a squeaking rabbit is
to a child who has a "lubbly blush"? That was a lesson I had lately
learned.

I didn't say all that to Zerlina, because, you see, she is a mother, and
I couldn't understand these things. She was very much surprised at being
late for the party, so surprised. She was full of apologies.

It was so good of me to help her! Had the darling children enjoyed
themselves?

I said, yes, they had, and the adorable mothers, and the delicious
Frauleins, and the heavenly mademoiselles. At this Zerlina looked a
little pained, and I was sorry I was cross, but I felt her want of
sympathy for Thomas. But then she had never passed that closed door.




Chapter VII


As a professional aunt must live somewhere, if only to simplify the
delivery of telegrams, it is as well perhaps to explain where I live and
why. The answer to the where, is London, and to the why, because it
is the best place for all professionals to live in. Many were the
suggestions that I should live in the country. Careful relatives and
good housewives saw a chance of cheap and fresh eggs, cheap and large
chickens, and cheap and freshly gathered vegetables, which showed, in
the words of Dr. Johnson, a triumph of hope over experience, for I have
always found that there are no eggs so dear as those laid by the hens of
friends, no chickens so thin as those kept by relatives, no vegetables
so expensive as those grown by acquaintances. But a professional aunt
would of course be expected to make special terms, although her hens,
like those of other people, would eat corn, and railways would charge
just the same for carrying her goods, whether they were consigned to
sisters-in-law or not, and the expense of the carriage is the reason
invariably given why things are so dear when bought from friends.
Friends, too, have a way of sending chickens with their feathers on,
whereas the chickens one knows by sight, laid in rows in poulterers'
shops, have no association with feathers. Don't you dislike the country
friend who asks you to spend a night, and then tells you at breakfast
that the pillow you slept on was filled with the feathers of departed
hens known and loved by her?

Then there was Nannie, and my living in London added a great importance
to her position. She became at once chaperon, housekeeper, counselor,
and friend. It was a great joy to her to think that she shielded me
from the dangers of London; and she would willingly have fetched me
from dinners and parties generally, and saw nothing incongruous in the
announcement, "Miss Lisle's nurse is at the door."

"Not that I should be at the door," said Nannie; "I never go anywhere
but what I am asked inside and treated as such." Nannie still thinks of
us as children, and will continue to do so, no doubt until she who has
rocked so many babies to sleep shall herself be enfolded in the arms of
Mother Earth--and tenderly bidden to sleep.

Personally I had a leaning toward a flat, so many of my friends told me
of the joys of shutting it up when one goes away, which, by the way, I
find they never, or very rarely, do. But Nannie didn't hold with flats.
It is curious what things people don't hold with. After reading of a
terrible murder in a railway carriage, I cautioned my little housemaid,
who was going home one Sunday, to be careful not to be thrown out of
a window. She replied, "I don't hold with girls who are thrown out of
windows."

Well, Nannie didn't hold with flats. To please me and to show her
open-mindedness, she went with me to look at flats, but there was a
tactless integrity about her criticism. I discovered that she judged of
everything from a nursery point of view; and when I ventured to suggest
that, as there were no children, a nursery was not of very great
importance, she said, "You never can tell." In this instance I felt I
could most distinctly tell, and wondered whether I might too tell Nannie
of something I didn't hold with. But I didn't. I remember once long ago
one of us asking Nannie if any one could have children without being
married, and Nannie answered in a very matter of fact voice, "They can,
dear, but it's better not." Anyhow, she didn't hold with flats. "There's
the porters for one thing," she said. That, of course, settled it, and
we looked at small houses.

"I suppose you will get married one of these days," she said, as we
stood on a doorstep waiting to be let in.

"Perhaps no one will have me," I said.

"Well, they might; people marry you least expect to. Look at Maria
Dewberry; you would never have--"

The door opened, or we will presume so, as my knowledge of Maria's
movements after her surprising marriage is nil.

Looking over houses is not without excitement, and certainly not without
surprises; but I was spared the experience some unknown person had who
came one day to see our house when we all lived in London, but happened
to be away. Having a house in the country, we very often did let the
London house, which accounts for the agent's mistake.

One day, just as Archie was going out, he found on the doorstep a
charming lady with a very pretty daughter.

"May we see over the house?" she asked.

"Certainly," said Archie.

He showed them all over the house, from cellar to garret. He says he
initiated them into the mysteries of the dark cupboard, and he says he
showed them everything of historic interest in the family. The daughter,
he vows, was tremendously interested. When they had seen everything and
Archie had brought them back to the hall, the charming mother said, "And
when is the house to let?"

"Oh! it's not to let," said Archie.

He says he assured them it was no trouble at all, etc.!

In every small house we went, Nannie trudged laboriously up to the
top, and I heard her murmuring, "Night, day," as she went backward and
forward, from one room to the other. At last we found a small house in
Chelsea of which she thoroughly approved. She couldn't exonerate the
agent from all blame in saying that there were views of the river from
the window. "Not but what there might be if we, leaned out far enough,
but we can't because of the bars." It was the very bars that had
attracted her in the first instance, from the outside. Bars meant a
nursery. Iron bars may not make a cage, but they undoubtedly make a
nursery.

She stood at the top window and looked out on the green trees, and a
blackbird was obliging enough, at that very moment, to sing a love-song.
Perhaps it was about nurseries, and Nannie understood it; at all events
she decided there and then to take the house. "Of course," she said, "I
know there's no nursery wanted, but I don't hold with houses that can't
have nurseries in them, if they want to." That gave me an idea! It came
like a flash. Nannie should have her nursery!

Of course this all happened some years ago, when the home at Hames was
broken up. With the help of Diana I managed it beautifully. It was kept
a dead secret. Diana collected, or rather allowed me to collect, all the
things Nannie had specially loved in the home nursery, which I am sure
cost Diana a pang, as she was very anxious her children should abide by
tradition and grow up among the things their father had loved as a boy;
but she sent them all, even the rocking-horse, to me for my nursery.

The walls I had papered just as our nursery had been papered. Even the
old kettle was rescued from oblivion, and stood on the hob. It was
so old that any jumble sale would have been pleased to have it. The
kettle-holder hung on the wall, with its cat on a green ground, which
had been lovely in the day of its youth. One of us had worked it; Nannie
of course knew which. The tea-set was there with its green, speckled
ground.

But while all this was being arranged, Nannie had a very bad time. It
was not for long, certainly, but she said it was pretty bad while it
lasted. To insure the complete secrecy of our nursery plan, we arranged
that she should go to Hames while we were doing it all, never thinking
of what she would feel on going into the Hames nursery and finding all
her treasures gone, and finding another woman reigning in her place; for
all through our grown-up years the nursery had been left for Nannie as
it had been when we were children. The nurse in her place hurt most.

"'Mrs.' here and 'Mrs.' there, certificated and teaching. It's all very
well, but I'm not sure they don't go too far in this teaching business.
No amount of teaching will--Well, it's there, so what's the use? I
expect Eve knew how to handle Cain right enough."

"He wasn't very well brought up, though, Nannie," I said.

"Poor child!" said Nannie. "How do we know it wasn't Abel's fault? He
may have been an aggravating child; some are born so, and I've seen a
child, many a time, go on at another till he's almost worried him
into a frenzy just saying, 'I see you,' over and over again, does
it sometimes. Children will do it, of course; besides, there were no
commandments then, and you can't expect children to do right without
rules and regulations. That's all discipline is, rules and regulations,
which is commandments, so to speak."

"You think, then, Nannie," I said, "that Eve forgot to tell Cain not to
kill Abel?"

"Well," said Nannie, "Eve had a lot to do; we can't blame her. She must
have had a lot to do. Think what a worry Adam must have been: he had no
experience, no nothing; he couldn't be a help to a woman, brought up as
he was, always thinking of himself as first, as of course he was! Now,
there's Parker--he is a good husband: he rolls the beef on Sunday to
save Mrs. Parker trouble, and prepares the vegetables; he is a good
husband, no trouble in the house whatsoever. He never brings in dirt,
Mrs. Parker says, wipes his feet ever so before he comes, on the finest
day just the same."

I thought the comparison a little hard on Adam, but still I didn't say
so, and Nannie reverted to the modern nurse, after informing me that men
and horses were sacred beasts!

"Well, about nurses, 'Mrs.' before a nurse's name doesn't soothe a
fretful child, nor make her more patient or loving. It might make her
less patient, if she took to wishing the 'Mrs.' was real instead of
sham; some women are like that, all for marrying. I dare say," said
Nannie, when going over her experiences, "my face did look blank when I
missed all my treasures, but f said nothing, although it was a blow when
I thought of all the lovely times you had had with that rocking-horse.
You remember the hole in it? Well, that was cut out solid because of all
the things that were inside that rocking-horse; almost all the things
that had been lost for years we found in that horse. My gold chain, for
one thing, to say nothing of other things. The tail came out, and that
is how the things got lost. The boys, always up to mischief, just popped
anything they came across down that hole and put in the tail again, so
no one knew anything about it. Well, then, your father lost something
very special, I forget what, and there was a to-do! And Jane said she
believed there was a power of things down that rocking-horse, so we got
Jane's sister's young man, who was a carpenter, or by way of being,
to come and cut out a square block out of the underneath--well, the
stomach--of that horse--and then we found things! Things we had lost
for years. Then we put the block back, and no one would have noticed
particularly, not unless they had looked. Well, that's what I missed,
the rocking-horse, but still I said nothing. Then we had tea out of new
cups, and still I said nothing, because tea-cups will get broken, and
you can't expect young girls to take care of cups like we did. The
kettle-holder was gone! Then Mrs. David came in. Oh! she is lovely and
like your mother in some ways,--the ways of going round and speaking
to every one,--and she laid her hand on Betty's head, just as I've seen
your mother do a hundred times on yours, and that was hard to bear.
Anyhow, it's a good thing it wasn't some one else who got Hames. There
's that to be thankful for. It begins with 'Z,' you know."

"Nannie!" I said.

"Z for Zebra," said Nannie.

When the new nursery was all ready, Nannie was sent for. A dozen times
that day I ran up that narrow staircase, and in the morning I laid the
tea to see how it would look, and it looked so pretty that I left it.
At four o'clock the fire was lighted and the kettle was put on to boil.
Nannie drove up in a four wheeler. I was in the hall to meet her.
She lingered to look at everything. She went round and round the
dining-room, up to the drawing-room, even into the spare room, but no
word of nursery. "Which is my room?" she said.

"It's upstairs," I said. "Won't you come and look at it?"

"There's no hurry, is there, miss?"

I could see it was the nursery floor she dreaded.

"Well, there is rather a hurry, Nannie," I said. "I am so anxious to see
if you like all the house."

At last I got her upstairs. I threw open the nursery door. It was too
sudden, no doubt. At the sight of the kettle, the rocking-horse, the
tea-set, she burst into tears.

"Dear, dear Nannie," I said, "it is your own nursery; it's all from
Hames."

She paused in her sobs. "The robin mug's wrong," she said, and she
moved it to the opposite side of the table; "he always sat there." "He"
applied to a little brother who had died, not to the mug.

"It's a very small nursery, Nannie," I said apologetically.

"Well, there are no children to make it untidy," she answered.

So Nannie and I settled down in our nursery, and through the darkening
of that first evening she talked to me of my mother. It seems to me very
wonderful how one woman can so devotedly love the children of another,
but was it not greatly for the love of that other woman that Nannie
loved us so much? It is her figure, I know, that Nannie sees when she
shuts her eyes and re-peoples the nursery in her dreams,--that lovely
mother, the center of that nursery and home; that mother so quick to
praise, so loath to blame, so ready to find good in everything, so
tender to suffering, so pitiful to sin!

"Tell me about her when she was quite young, Nannie," I said.

And Nannie talked on, telling me the stories I knew by heart and loved
so dearly; and then, I remember, she started up.

"What is it, Nannie?" I asked.

"I thought she was calling," she replied; "I often seem to hear her
voice."

Dear Nannie! I believe she is ready to answer that call at any moment,
for all the love of her new nursery.

That is how I came to live in London.





Chapter VIII


Most people, I imagine, who live in London are asked by their relatives
and friends who live in the country to shop for them. My post is often
 nothing more upsetting than on a very hot summer's morning, or a wet
winter's one, to find an envelope on my plate, or beside it, addressed
in Cousin Anastasia's large handwriting. "Dearest," the letter inside
it begins, "if" (heavily underlined) "you should be passing Paternoster
Row, will you choose me a nice little prayer-book, without a cross
on it, please; people tell me they are cheaper there than elsewhere,
prayer-books, I mean, for Jane, who is going to be confirmed. She
is such a nice clean girl. I do hope she will be as clean after her
confirmation, but one never can tell. In any case I feel I ought to give
her something, and a prayer-book, under the circumstances, seems the
most suitable thing."

Jane, I remember, is a kitchen-maid. Of course I never pass Paternoster
Row, but that to a country cousin of Anastasia's mental caliber is not
worth consideration. She has no knowledge of geography, London's or
otherwise, and is doubtless one of those people who think New Zealand is
another name for Australia.

On another occasion she writes to say that Martha, the head housemaid,
"such an excellent servant," (all heavily under lined), who has been
with them seventeen years, is going to marry a nice, clean widower with
six children. She must give her a nice present; "nice" is underlined
several times. She has heard that in the Edgeware Road there are to be
had, complete in case, for three-and-sixpence, excellent clocks. She
doesn't know the name of the shop, but she believes it begins with "P,"
and if I could look in as I pass, she would be most grateful. As will be
guessed, Anastasia is a wealthy woman with no sense of humor. She knows
she has none, and she says she doesn't know what rich people want it
for. Of course for poor people it is an excellent thing, because it
enables them to look at the bright side of things; but as Anastasia's
things, life in particular, are bright on all sides, she doesn't need
that particular sense.

Then there is another country cousin she is so sweet and diffident about
asking me to do anything, that I feel I ought willingly to look into
every shop window in the Edgeware Road beginning with "P" or any other
letter, however wet or hot the day! And I am not sure that I wouldn't!
Her writing is as meek as Anastasia's is aggressive, and she never
descends to the transparency of an underlined "if." She says, would I
mind sending her a book, called so-and-so, by such and such an author,
price so much? It is all plain sailing with Cousin Penelope. She knows
just what she wants and where to get it; so much so that I sometimes
wonder why she doesn't send straight to the shop. But country cousins
never do that; for wherein would lie the use of London cousins, if they
didn't shop for their country cousins? How would they occupy their time?
She would like me please to get it at Bumpus's, because they are so
very civil and they knew her dear father. I might mention his name if I
thought fit! Now, I know quite well that it is impossible that any
one at Bumpus's, be he ever so venerable, can ever have known Cousin
Penelope's father. The name, being Smith, may no doubt be familiar. Of
course Cousin Penelope would repay any expense I incurred. In fact she
must insist on so doing.

"Insist" seems too strong a word to apply to any power that Cousin
Penelope could enforce. It would be something so gentle; persistent,
perhaps, but insistent? Never! "I beg, I implore, I entreat," would all
be suitable, but "I insist" does not suggest Cousin Penelope.

Dear Cousin Penelope, we are told, had a love-story in her youth, the
sadness of which ruined her life. It must have been a very beautiful
thing, that sorrow, to have made her what she is. One feels that it
must be a very wonderful love that is laid away in the wrappings of
submission and tied with the ribbons of resignation. There is assuredly
no bitterness about it, and I sometimes wonder if one's own sorrow
which tears and tugs at one's heart will some day leave such a record
of holiness and patience on one's face! I am afraid not. I look in the
glass, but I see nothing in the reflection which in the least resembles
Cousin Penelope, nor can I believe that time will do it, nor am I brave
enough to wish it. I cannot yet pray for a peace like hers. People say
time can do everything, but

     "Time is
       Too slow for those who wait,
       Too swift for those who fear,
       Too long for those who grieve,
       Too short for those who rejoice,
       But for those who love Time is
                           Eternity."

So it is written on a sun-dial I know, and when I have a sun-dial of my
own, those words shall be written thereon.

I think time lies heavily sometimes on Hugh's hands. He said one day,
"The days pass by, Betty, and we don't grow up!"

To return to booksellers. There is "Truslove and Hanson" in my more or
less immediate neighborhood, who are civil to a degree, but they did
not know Cousin Penelope's father, therefore they are not specially
qualified to sell a book to his daughter! So to Bumpus I must go, and
I love it. A bookshop is a joy to me; the feel of books, the smell of
books, the look of books, I love! I even enjoy cutting the pages of a
book, which I believe every one does not enjoy.

Then there is another country cousin, Pauline. When her letter comes,
I open it with mixed feelings, in which the feeling of fondness
predominates. One can't help loving her. She never asks one to shop for
her, but with her, which is perhaps an even greater test of friendship.
On a particularly hot day, I remember, a letter came from Pauline which
announced her immediate arrival. I was, waiting in the hall for her,
ready to start, which is a stipulation she always makes, as she says
it is such a pity to waste time. She greeted me in the same rather
tempestuous manner that I am accustomed to at the hands of Betty and
Hugh, and then she ran down the steps again to tell the cabman that he
had a very nice horse, which she patted, and said, "Whoa, mare!"
She always does that. She then asked the cabman how long he had been
driving, whether it was difficult to drive at night, and whether it was
true he could only see his horse's ears; and I think she asked if he had
any children, but of that I am not quite sure. If she didn't, it was a
lapse of memory on her part. Even the cab-runner interested her. Hadn't
I noticed what a sad face he had?

I said I hadn't noticed anything except that he was rather dirty.
Pauline said, "Of course he is dirty; what would you be, if you ran
after cabs all day?" I wondered.

Talking of cab-runners, I told her of the children's party I went to
with Cousin Penelope, who, very much afraid that she was late, said in
her sweetest manner to a man who opened the cab-door for us, "Are we
late?" And the man answered, "I really cannot say, madam; I have only
just this moment arrived myself."

He was in rags, which I did not tell her; the sponge cake would have
stuck in her throat at tea if I had. But I gave him something for his
ready wit, and wished for weeks afterwards that I had plunged into the
darkness after him. "What a charming man!" said Cousin Penelope. But to
return to Pauline.

"What a glorious day we are going to have!" she said. "It is good of you
to say I may stay the night, and if I go to a ball, you won't mind? I
have brought a small box,--as you see."

I did see, and to my mind its size bordered on indecency. I like a box
to look sufficiently large to take all I think a woman ought to need
for a night's stay. Pauline often assures me it does hold everything,
squashed tight, of course. I say it must be squashed very tight, and
she says it is. "That's the beauty of the present-day fashion of fluffy
things: everything is so easily squashed, and yet you can't squash them;
an accordion-pleated thing, for instance."

To a man whose admiration for a woman is gauged by the amount of luggage
she can travel without, Pauline would prove irresistible. I know one who
prides himself on his packing, and who has a horror of much luggage. He
was all packed ready to go to Scotland, when his wife asked him if he
could lend her a collar-stud for her flannel shirts, and he said, "Yes,
but you must carry it yourself, I'm full up!"

To that man Pauline, I am sure, would be very attractive.

When Pauline and I started off on our shopping expedition, she demurred
at taking a hansom, although she loves driving in them; but she said
'buses were so much more amusing. "People in 'buses say such funny
things," she said, and so they do. The old lady in particular who, when
the horse got his leg over the trace without hurting himself or any one
else, got up and announced to the 'bus in general: "There, I always did
say I hated horses and dogs," and sat down again. I loved her for that
and for other things too, among them her apple-cheeks and poke bonnet.

Another reason why I insisted upon a hansom is that Pauline is not to be
trusted in a 'bus; her interest in her fellow-creatures is embarrassing.
I have, moreover, sat opposite babies in 'buses with Pauline, and where
a baby is concerned, she has no self-control. So I was firm, and we
started off in a hansom. I was continually besought to look at some
delicious baby, first this side, then that.

Pauline calmly avers that she would go mad if she lived in London. She
couldn't stand seeing so many beautiful children, or babies, beautiful
or otherwise. It is curious how babies in perambulators hold out their
hands to Pauline as she passes, and laugh and gurgle at her.

Once in Piccadilly, beautiful babies became less plentiful, and Pauline
turned her thoughts and sympathies to horses and bearing-reins. She was
instantly plunged into the depths of despair. Couldn't I do something,
she asked, to remedy such a crying evil? She said it was the duty of
every woman in London--Something in the catalogue she was carrying
arrested her attention, and what it was the duty of every woman to do I
am not sure. I did not ask, but was grateful for the peace which ensued.

Pauline was glad the sales were on. She loved them, and yet she didn't
like them, because she didn't think they brought out the best side of a
woman's character. "I think," she said, "a woman's behavior at sales is
a test, don't you?"

I said I thought her behavior as regarded swing-doors was a surer one.
She said she hadn't thought of that.

"But I know what you mean; I do dislike the flouncing, pushing woman. I
think every one should be taught to be courteous and gentle, don't you?"
She added, "I hate being pushed."

I told her of a woman next me in a 'bus one day, who said, "You're
a-sittin' on me!" How I rose and politely begged her pardon, whereupon
she said, "Now you're a-standin' on me!" And we agreed that there is no
pleasing some people.

Pauline returned to the perusal of the catalogue, in which she had put
a large cross against the picture of a coat and skirt. She said she was
stock-size. She didn't suppose any really smart women were. "Or would
own to it," I suggested, but she didn't answer; she never does if she
detects any savor of malice in a remark. She was very anxious I should
admire the illustration. I did, but I felt it my duty as a London cousin
to a country cousin to tell her that the illustration might lead her
to expect too much. She warmly agreed that of course as regarded the
figure, etc., the illustration was misleading, because she, of course,
could never look so beautifully willowy as that. She was inclined to
come out where the illustration went in, and she could never be so
slanty, never; but apart from that, of course the coat and skirt would
be exactly as it was pictured. Her figure would be to blame, of course.
Her figure happens to be a very pretty one, but she didn't give me
time to say so. I repeated that I should not put implicit faith in the
illustration. She was a little hurt. She did not think it right to cast
aspersions on the character of so respectable a firm as that whose name
headed the catalogue. I said I didn't see it quite in the same light.
Pauline looked at me reproachfully, and said drawing a lie was as bad as
telling one.

The argument was beyond me; besides, I like Pauline to look
reproachfully at me, she is so pretty. Being as pretty as she
undoubtedly is, I often wonder why she is not more effective.

The right kind of country beauty is very convincing to the jaded
Londoner; but to convince, one must be convinced, and that is exactly
what Pauline is not. She never thinks whether she is beautiful or not,
and I am sure it often lies with the woman herself, how beautiful people
think her, except in the rare cases of real beauty, when there can
be but one opinion. But in the case of ordinary beauty, the woman is
appraised at her own value. Then there is the art of putting on clothes,
of which Pauline is absolutely ignorant. There is even a studied
untidiness which passes under the name of picturesque. All of this is
a closed book to Pauline, and, after all, she is a delightful creature;
but the trouble to me was that, at the time she came up to shop with me,
she didn't wear good boots, and to do that I hold is part, or should be
part, of a woman's creed. She gets her boots from the village shoemaker
because his wife died. Her eyes filled with tears at the mere thought of
the man, and she told me she thought it right to encourage local talent.
In the boots I saw evidences of locality,--bumps, for instance,--but not
of talent. Pauline was very indignant and said she had no bumps on her
feet. "But you see my position?" I did, but I persuaded her to have some
good boots made in London. This she consented to do, rather unwillingly
and on the distinct understanding that in the country she should
continue to encourage local talent. "On wet days," I ventured.

And at flower-shows, she added.

I have seen Pauline in the country, against a background of golden beech
trees and brown bracken, look even beautiful; but in London she lacks
something, possibly the right background. She has glorious hair, but her
maid can't do it. Pauline admits it, but she says she can't send a nice
woman away on that account; besides, she suffers from rheumatism, and
Pauline's particular part of the country suits her better than any
other.

"Couldn't she learn?" I suggested.

"No, she can't," said Pauline. "She had lessons once, and she came back
and did my hair like treacle, all over my head,--no idea, absolutely. I
should never look like you, whatever I did."

"My dear Pauline," I said, "what nonsense!"

"It's not nonsense. Father was saying only the other day that you are a
beautiful creature, only no one seems to see it."

"Dear Uncle Jim," I said; "how delightful, and how like him!"

"But it's true you are beautiful; only the part about the people
not seeing it isn't true: that's father's way of putting it. You are
beautiful!"

"My dear child!"

"Why do you say 'dear child' to me? People would think you were years
and years older than I am. Why do you always talk as if life were over?
Have you a secret sorrow?"

If Pauline, warm-hearted, loving Pauline had really thought I had, she
would have been the last person to ask such a question.

"Do I look it?" I asked.

"No-o. Only when people seem to spend the whole of their life in doing
things for other people, it makes one suspect that they are saying
to themselves, 'As we can't be happy ourselves, we can see that other
people are.'"

"What a philosopher you are, Pauline! If you go on that supposition, you
must have a terrible sorrow somewhere hidden behind that happy face of
yours."

Pauline is not meant to live in London. She thanks people in a crowd for
letting her pass. If she is pushed off the pavement, she is only sorry
that the person can be so rude as to do it. She never gets into a 'bus
or takes any vehicular advantage over a widow, and she feels choky if
she sees any one very old. "Do you know why?" she asked. "Because they
are, so near Heaven, and sometimes I think you see the reflection of it
in their faces."

"Like Cousin Penelope," I said.

We arrived at the shop where the coat and skirt were to be had, and
Pauline, having admired the horse and thanked the cabman, and the
commissionaire, who held his arm over a perfectly dry wheel, followed me
into the shop. She admired everything as she went through the different
departments, and apologized to the shop walkers for not being able to
buy everything; but she lived in the country, and although the things
were lovely, they would be no use to her--dogs on her lap most of the
day, and so on.

Everyone looked at Pauline; and old ladies, to whom she always appeals
very much, put their heads on one side, as old ladies do when they
admire anything very much, anything which reminds them of their own
youth, and smiled. Old ladies have this privilege, that when they arrive
at a certain age, they are allowed to think they were beautiful in their
youth, and to tell you so. It is a recognized thing, and one of the
recompenses of old age. We all know that every one had a beautiful
grandmother--one at least; and if a portrait of one grandmother belies
the fact, then there is the other one to fall back upon, of whom,
unfortunately, no portrait exists, and she was abs--so--lute--lee
lovely!

The coat and skirt were found and eagerly compared with the
illustration, and Pauline turned to me and said with a triumphant
ringing her voice: "It wasn't an exaggeration. I knew it wouldn't be.
Mother has dealt here for years."

Then we went upstairs to try it on. In a few minutes Pauline had
discovered that the fitter was supporting her deceased sister's husband
and six children, the eldest of whom wasn't quite right and the youngest
had rickets. She was so distressed that she didn't want the back of her
coat altered, the woman already had so much to bear. But I prevailed
upon her to have the alteration made regardless of the woman's domestic
anxieties. I felt sure it would make no difference. But I cannot help
feeling that Pauline's visit to that shop did make a difference to that
poor woman, if only for a few moments in her life. And I think those
children's lives were made happier too; but it is difficult to get
Pauline to talk of these things.

Then we went to the shoemaker, and Pauline told him all about the
widower bootmaker, and of her scruples about having boots made by any
one else. The bootmaker evidently thought that a foot like Pauline's was
worthy of a good boot and Pauline said there were occasions on which one
had to sink one's own feelings. She was scandalized at London prices,
and told the man so. "But of course it means higher pay for the men, so
it's all right."

On our way home I said to Pauline that I couldn't understand why she was
so economical--ready-made coats and skirts, and afraid of paying a fair
price for good boots! Was her allowance smaller than it used to be? She
got pink and didn't answer. I determined she should, and at last she
did.

"Well, you see, I pay a woman to come and wash the shoemaker's children
on Saturday evenings."

I smiled. "That can't cost much, unless she provides the soap."

Pauline got pinker still. "Well, I pay for the village nurse, and a few
other little things. Then there's a little baby," she dropped her voice,
"who has no mother--she died--and who never had a father, and every one
doesn't care for those sort of babies.--You do like my coat and skirt,
don't you?"




Chapter IX


I think, by the way, that it was on that very day that Mr. Dudley met
Pauline. She, of course, would know the exact date and hour, but I am
almost sure of it, for although it may mean a day of less ecstatic
joy to me than it does to her, it brought much peace and subsequent
happiness into my life, and therefore is writ in red letters in my book
of days. For the visits of Dick Dudley had latterly become more frequent
than I cared for, and much as I liked him, I began to wish that I
had remained in his estimation under the shadow of Diana's charming
personality, for so he had tolerated me until the fateful day on which I
had partaken of Betty's gray wad. That act of professional valor ignited
a spark of feeling for me in his breast, which, fostered by Hugh's
constant suggestion, sprang into something warmer than I could have
wished, and was fanned into flame on the day on which he found me paying
a visit of consolation to the small fat Thomas. Now, strangely enough,
that small fat person was nephew to Dick Dudley. How small the world is!
And the mother turned out to have been exactly the sort of mother I had
thought she must be. One of the nicest things about Dick Dudley was the
way he spoke of that sister, and we had long talks about her, until I
awoke to the fact that that sister and I must have been twins, so alike
were we; then I began to be afraid. For I couldn't tell him that there
was some one far away, for whom I was waiting from day to day. One
can hardly barricade one's self behind such an announcement. The
classification of women is incomplete. There are those who are engaged
and who care; there are those who are engaged and who don't care; there
are those who don't care and, who are not engaged; then there are those
who care and who are not engaged, so cannot say. It is not their
fault if, sometimes, they wound a passing lover. Mercifully there are
Pauline's in this world to relieve one of unsought affections, and I
liked Dick Dudley well enough, and not too much to be glad when I saw
him give ever such a small start when he walked into my drawing-room and
saw Pauline sitting there, clothed in cool green linen and looking her
very best. I had done her glorious hair on the top--that, I think is
the expression--and she sat in the window so that her hair shone like
burnished gold, and she was saying in a voice fraught with emotion,
"If I had my way, there should be no sorrow or suffering," which of all
sentiments was the most likely to appeal to Dick Dudley, for he is one
of those who look upon sorrow and suffering as bad management on the
part of some one, since the world is really such an awfully jolly place,
if only people didn't make a muddle of their lives. He says it is all
very well to talk of high ideals, you can't live up to them, the best
you can do is to live up to the highest practical ideal. But then his
standard of ideal is very much higher since he saw Pauline for the first
time. Pauline blushed when a strange man walked into the room, which was
all for the best, and made the day a happier one for me. Not that Dick
Dudley was not very loyal to me. He tried, I could see it was an effort
not to talk too much to Pauline, although the topic of bearing-reins,
under certain circumstances, was a very engrossing one, and spaniels a
never-ending one. Pauline expressed her surprise that Mr. Dudley should
ask her if she lived in London.

"I thought every one could see I lived in the country," she said. "Did
you mean it for a compliment?" she asked kindly.

Dick Dudley was a little overcome by this, and he said he would hardly
have dared to pay her a compliment, since every one knew that girls who
lived in the country away from bearing-reins and other hardening and
worldly influences, and in close proximity to spaniels, black, liver and
white, cocker, clumber, and otherwise, were so vastly superior to their
London sisters. Here Dick got a little deep and Pauline kindly rescued
him.

"A compliment to my clothes, I meant," she said; "because all my friends
in London tell me my clothes are so countrified."

Dick listened very, very seriously to the reasons why Pauline was
obliged to have most of her clothes made in the country, and I could see
that every moment he thought less of the importance of clothes and
their makers, and more and more of the qualities essential in woman,
simplicity, goodness, frankness, and an absence of artificiality. I saw
it all on his face, dawning slowly and surely. By the time we had had
tea, I could see it was a matter of mutual satisfaction to both Dick and
Pauline to find that they were going to the same dance that night. The
responsibility of chaperoning Pauline was not mine.

My anxiety as to the ball dress emerging from the small box was relieved
by Pauline telling me that it was to come from the dressmaker just
in time for her to dress for the ball; which it did. She came to be
inspected by Nannie and me before she started, and she really looked
delicious. Her assets as a country girl counted heavily that night, she
looked so fresh, so natural, and so full of the joy of living. Her hair
counted, every hair of it. Nannie was so touched that she wept aloud and
said it was what I ought to be doing. But I told her professional
aunts went only to children's parties, where they could be of some use.
Pauline wished I was going. "Betty," she said and paused, "I am sure Mr.
---- is his name Dudley? feels very much your not going." I laughed,
and marked it down against her that she should have said, "Is his name
Dudley?" It was the first evidence of feminine guile I had detected in
her. Men are answerable for a very great deal.

I woke to greet Pauline when she came into my sunlit room at five
o'clock in the morning, looking still fresh, untired, and more than ever
full of the joy of living. "Oh, it was lovely," she said, sitting down
on my bed.

"Who saw you home?" I asked professionally.

"Oh, Aunt Adela to the very door; she even waited till I shut it."

"Who did you dance with?" I asked.

"Heaps and heaps of people. I was lucky; all Thorpshire seemed to be
there; and then Mr. Dudley. Betty, I understand now."

"What?" I said, alarmed by the note of tragic kindness in her voice.

"About Mr. Dudley, he talked about you so beautifully. He agrees with
me absolutely about your character, and he told me about his sister."
Pauline's voice became hushed.

"Did he say she was just a little like you, Pauline?"

"Yes, he did. You knew her, then? He said I reminded him of her so
strangely. I think he would make a woman very happy. I do really."

"So do I, dear Pauline, really."

"Then won't you?"

"No, darling goose."

"Why?"

"Because I am not the woman. Go to bed, Pauline."

She went--to sleep? I cannot say. I forget whether a girl goes to sleep
the first night after she has fallen in love. Night? I suppose I should
say morning. But it depends on the hour when she takes the first step
into that bewildering fairyland of first love. For a fairyland it
assuredly is, if she is lucky enough to find the right guide. He must,
to begin with, believe in the fairyland. He must know that the path may
be rough at times, stony and overgrown with weeds, but he will know that
all the difficulties will be worth while when he brings her out into the
open, and they look away to the limitless horizon of happiness.

A few hours later, Pauline said to me at breakfast, "Betty, I think I
shall tell that bootmaker to make me two pairs of boots and two pairs
of shoes. It is better to have enough while one is about it, don't you
think so?"

So began the regeneration of Pauline, regeneration in the matter of
footgear, I mean, and to wear good boots did her character no harm, nor
the pocket of the country shoemaker either, I am sure. Good boots could
not turn her feet from the pathway of truth and goodness which from her
earliest childhood she had set out to tread, never pausing except to
pick up some one who lagged behind, or to help some one who had strayed
from the path.

Dick Dudley, whose pathway through life had zigzagged considerably, was
astonished to find how easy the pathway was to keep, guided by Pauline,
and how alluring the goal of goodness. He gave himself up gladly to her
guidance, and was touched to find how much there was of latent goodness
in him. He had never before realized, that was all, how much he loved
his fellow-creatures, how he longed to help them all, how the conditions
of the laboring-classes made his blood boil with indignation, how he
idolized babies, loved old women, reverenced old men.

It was all a revelation to him. It was, moreover, delightful to be told
by Pauline how wonderful she found all these things in him, and how
unexpected. This, she explained, was nothing personal. "But I often
wondered if I should ever meet a man like you."

"Darling," he answered humbly, "I don't think I am that sort of man;
really, I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary."

Then Pauline, to prove the contrary, would ask him if he didn't feel
this or that or the other? And of course he could truthfully say he did,
because he felt all and everything Pauline wished him to feel, with her
beautiful eyes fixed upon him and the flush of enthusiasm on her
cheeks. Here was something to inspire a man, this splendidly generous,
magnanimous creature. Of course he had always felt all these things; he
had been groping after goodness. It was the goodness in Diana, and he
was kind enough to say in the professional aunt, which had appealed to
him. He had been feeling after, it for years, but it was only Pauline
who had revealed it to him, in himself. Well, he was very much in love.
Most men engaged to charming girls feel their own unworthiness, and
the girl is sweetly content that they should do so. Not so Pauline. She
revealed to her astonished lover a depth of goodness in his character
that he had least suspected, and he gradually began to feel how little
he had been understood.

Now this is an excellent basis on which to start an engagement. I forget
exactly how and when they became engaged, but it was certainly before
Dick said humbly, "Darling, I don't think I am that sort of man; really,
I'm awfully and frightfully ordinary," because, with all Pauline's
kindness to sinners, there was none hardened enough to address her as
"darling" without being first engaged to her; so by that I know they
were engaged that evening at the opera, because it was in a Wagnerian
pause that Dick said those words, in a loud voice from the back of the
box. How else should a professional aunt know these things?

Between meeting Dick and becoming engaged to him, Pauline went home and
came back with a larger box and stayed quite a long time, as time goes,
although, as a time in which to become engaged, it was very short, and
Nannie, feeling this, asked Pauline if she knew much about Mr. Dudley,
and was she wise? In spite of this anxiety on Nannie's part, she enjoyed
it all immensely, and wept to her heart's content when the engagement
was announced. Now Dick Dudley was a rich young man, and I wondered
whether other people wept too from motives less pure and simple than
Nannie's.

Pauline wanted me to join a society called "The Deaf Dog Society." The
obligation enforced on members was that they should kneel down, put
their arms round the neck of any deaf dog they should chance to meet,
and say, "Darling, I love you."

"You see," she said, "a deaf dog doesn't know he is deaf, he only
wonders why no one ever speaks to him, why no one ever calls him. So you
see what a splendid society it is, and there is no subscription."

Dick made a stipulation that the benefits of the society should be
conferred on dogs only. He made a point of that.




Chapter X


As there was nothing to wait for, happy people, it was agreed by all
parties that the wedding should take place in August, which kept me
rather late in town; it was hardly worth going away, to come back again,
as back again I had to come, as Betty and Hugh were coming to stay
with me for a night on their way to Thorpshire. It is not astonishing,
perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a
nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is
astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people
who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from
one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of
an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in
something that is not a real bed. We all remember that joy. Except for
that one child, it is an every-day thing and fraught with no particular
excitement. The servants, for instance, in a house where children are
an every-day thing, remain quite calm, if good tempered, when a visiting
child is expected, and the kitchen-maid, no doubt, cleans the doorstep
as usual, and, no doubt, takes in the milk. But this I know, that if I
had happened to possess such a thing when Betty and Hugh were coming
to stay, my doorstep would never have been cleaned. For once I was
glad that I depended on the services of a very small boy, who thinks
he cleans it. Staid and level-headed as were my maids, they answered no
bells that morning, which was perhaps natural, as I believe none ring
up to the nursery. Of course they had to be interested in Nannie's
arrangements.

It was a hot August day, I remember, and I sat at the window writing, or
pretending to write. As a matter of fact, I was listening. Among other
things to the "Austrian Anthem," played over and over again, first right
hand, then left, then both, but not together, by, I guessed, a child
about ten years old, next door.

Poor, hot child, how I pitied her.

"Never mind," I thought, "take courage, seaside time is coming. Within
a few days, no doubt, an omnibus will come to the door empty, to go away
full, filled with luggage, crowned by a perambulator and a baby's bath!"
It is only a woman who can travel with a perambulator and a bath; they
are the epitome of motherhood. A father is always too busy to go by that
particular train.

I heard the twitter of sparrows, the jingle of bells, the hooting of a
siren, or was it my neighbor singing "A rose I gave to you"? of course
it was,--the rumble of a post-office van, and the cry of children's
voices, rather peevish voices, poor mites! Never mind, seaside time is
coming.

Listening more intently, I beard in the far distance, yet distinct, the
cries of the children who ought to go to the seaside, children who have
never been to the seaside, never paddled, never built castles, never
caught crabs, never seen sea-anemones or starfish, children whose faces
are wan and whose mothers are too tired to be kind to them. It is often
that, I am sure, too tired to be kind!

Listening again, I heard faintly--it is not with the ears that one hears
these things--the unuttered complaints of those tired mothers, worn-out
women, despairing men, and the singing, in dark alleys and in hot areas,
of caged birds. There are thousands of caged creatures, other than
birds, in London in August, men, women, and children. Hats off, then,
to the little feathered Christians who sing for their fellow-prisoners
a paean of praise. It is perhaps easier to sing to the patch of blue sky
when you do not know that it will be hidden behind clouds tomorrow.

"They've come," cried Nannie.

"O Aunt Woggles!" said Hugh, "I've brought you a lovely caterpillar
wrapped up in grass."

"And I've brought you one of my very own bantam eggs," said Betty. "I've
kept it ever so long for you."

Then it will be bad, said Hugh.

"Oh, not so long as to be bad," said Betty. "You will eat it, won't you,
Aunt Woggles?"

Nannie was radiantly happy at tea that day, but I think her happiness
was supreme when she fetched me later to look at the children asleep.
We stole into Betty's room together, and Nannie shaded the candle as
she held it, for me to look at what is assuredly the loveliest thing on
God's earth--a sleeping child.

Nannie, in an eloquent silence, pointed to the chair on which lay
Betty's clean clothes, folded ready for the morning, and to her hairy
horse which she had brought for company. Her blue slippers were beside
the bed. Then we went into Hugh's room. He, too, lay peaceful and
beautiful, his clothes folded ready for the morning, and his pistol
beside him in case he was "attacked." His slippers were red, and Nannie,
at the sight of them, cried quietly. To some happy mothers a child's
slippers mean nothing more than size two or three, and serve only to
remind her how quickly children grow out of things!

But to Nannie they brought back memories of years of happiness, through
which little feet, in just the same sort of slippers, had pattered,
stumbling here, falling there, picked up, and guided by her. But she
thought most of the little feet in just that sort of slippers, that had
stopped still forever early on their life's journey. It is the voices
that are hushed that call most distinctly, the footsteps that stop that
are most carefully traced. It is the children who have gone that stand
and beckon!




Chapter XI


Pauline's wedding-day dawned gloriously bright and beautiful. The whole
village was up and doing, very early, putting the finishing touches to
the decorations.

The widower shoemaker and his children, and the woman who washed
them--the children, I mean--on Saturdays, had all combined to erect a
triumphal arch of, great splendor, and the woman showed such sensibility
in the choice of mottoes, and such a nice appreciation of the joys of
matrimony, together with a decided leaning towards the bridegroom's
side of the arch, that the shoemaker suggested that she should suit her
actions to her words--that was how he expressed it--and marry him, which
she agreed to do. But she afterwards explained, in breaking the news to
her friends, that they could have knocked her down with a leaf! Whether
this was due to the weakened state of her heart, or to her precarious
position on the ladder, I do not know.

Everybody and everything was in a bustle, with the exception of Aunt
Cecilia, who sat through it all as calm and as beautiful as ever. Not
that she did not feel parting with Pauline, but her love for everybody
and everything was of a nature so purely unselfish that it never
occurred to her to count the cost to herself.

I have never met any one who so completely combines in her character
gentleness and strength as does Aunt Cecilia: so gentle in spirit and
judgment, and so strong in her fight for principles and beliefs. If she
has a weakness, and I could never wish any one I love to be without one,
it lies in her love for Patience. She does not think it right to play in
the morning, but sometimes, being unable to withstand the temptation of
so doing, she plays it in an empty drawer of her writing-table, and if
she hears any one coming, she can close the drawer!

Her greatest interest in life, next to her husband and children, is her
garden and other people's gardens. In fact, she looks at life generally
from a gardening point of view, and is apt to regard men as gardeners,
possible gardeners, or gardeners wasted. As gardeners they have their
very distinct use, and as such deserve every consideration, but if a
man will not till the soil, he is a cumberer thereof. She, at least,
inclines that way in thought. Life, she says, is a garden, children the
flowers, parents the gardeners. "If we treated children as we do roses,
they would be far happier. We don't call roses naughty when they grow
badly and refuse to flower as they ought to; we blame the gardeners or
the soil."

"But, Aunt Cecilia," I say, "one can recommend an unsatisfactory
gardener to a friend, but one can't so dispose of unsatisfactory
parents."

"You must educate them, dear."

Now all this sounds very convincing when said by Aunt Cecilia, because,
for one thing, she says it very charmingly, and for another, she is
still a very beautiful woman. She is too fond, perhaps, of extinguishing
her beauty under a large mushroom hat, and is given to bending too much
over herbaceous borders, and so hiding her beautiful face. But I dare
say the flowers love to look at it, and to see mirrored in it their own
loveliness.

Aunt Cecilia wears a bonnet sometimes, and thereby hangs a tale. So few
aunts wear a bonnet nowadays that the fact of one doing so is almost
worth chronicling. She doesn't wear it very often, only at the
christenings of the head gardener's babies. From a christening point of
view that is very often, but from a bonnet point of view I suppose it
might be called seldom--once a year? I know that bonnet well, because it
has been sent to me often for renovation. On one particular occasion
it arrived in a cardboard box. On the top of the bonnet was a bunch of
flowers, beautiful enough to make any bonnet accompanying it welcome, in
whatever state of dilapidation. Aunt Cecilia has a knack of sending
just the right sort of flowers, and they always bring a message, which
everybody's flowers don't do.

The bonnet I renovated to the best of my ability and sent it back. In
the course of a few days I received a slightly agitated note from Aunt
Cecilia. "It doesn't suit me, dearest, and after all the trouble you
have taken!"

Knowing Aunt Cecilia, I wrote back, "Did you try it on in bed with your
hair down?"

She answered by return, "Dearest, I did! It really suits me very well
now that I have tried it on in my right mind. I am going to wear it
at the last little Shrub's christening, this afternoon. It is just in
time."

When David and Diana were singled out by night for the particular
attention of a burglar, Aunt Cecilia wrote to sympathize and said, "I am
so thankful, dearest, David did not meet the poor, misguided man!"

May we all be judged as tenderly!

This is a digression, but it perhaps explains Pauline and Pauline's
wedding, and the joy with which all the people in the village entered
into it.

The strangest people kept on arriving the morning of the wedding. It was
verily a gathering of the halt, the lame, and the blind--all friends of
Pauline's. Whenever Uncle Jim was particularly overcome, it was sure to
mean that some old soldier, officer or otherwise, had turned up, who had
served with him in some part of the world, long before Pauline was born.
Aunt Cecilia welcomed them all in her inimitable manner, which made each
one feel that he was the one and most particularly honored guest. For
all her apparent absent-mindedness, she knew exactly who belonged to
Mrs. Bunce's department and who not.

Mrs. Bunce, the old housekeeper, was very busy, every button doing its
duty! A wedding didn't come her way every day. The sisters-in-law, of
course, came with their belongings.

Zerlina was distressed at the nature of many of the presents; and
wondered if Pauline would have enough spare rooms to put them in; which
showed how little she knew her. If Pauline had told her that she valued
the alabaster greyhound under a glass case, subscribed for by the
old men and women in the village, over seventy, Zerlina wouldn't have
believed her any more than did old Mrs. Barker when Diana told her Sara
was named after a dear old housemaid and not after the Duchess.

Betty and Hugh were among the bridesmaids and pages, and Hugh shocked
Betty very much by saying, in the middle of the service "When may I play
with my girl?"

Some one described Uncle Jim as looking like one of the Apostles, and
Aunt Cecilia certainly looked like a saint. Ought I, by the way, to
bracket an apostle and a saint? But nothing was so wonderful or so
beautiful as the expression on Pauline's face. I am sure that, as she
walked up the aisle, she was oblivious to everything and every one
except God and Dick.

It is assuredly a great responsibility for a man to accept such a love
as hers.

A wedding is nearly always a choky thing, and Pauline's was particularly
so. As she left the church, she stopped in the churchyard to speak to
her friends, and for one old woman she waited to let her feel her dress.

"Is it my jewels you want to feel, Anne?" she said, as the old hands
tremblingly passed over her bodice. "I have on no jewels."

The old hands went up to Pauline's face and gently and reverently
touched it. "God bless her happy face," said the old woman. "I had to
know for sure." Pauline kissed the old fingers gently. We all knew for
sure, but then we had eyes to see.

Pauline went away in the afternoon, and the villagers danced far into
the evening, and there was revelry in the park by night.

After Pauline and Dick had gone away, I walked across the park to
the post office to send a telegram to Julia, who was kept at home by
illness, to her very great disappointment. There is nothing she adores
like a wedding. I was glad to escape for a few minutes. I wrote out the
telegram and handed it to the postmaster, who, reading it, said, I'm
glad it went off so well. "There's nobody what wouldn't wish her well."
Then he counted the words. "Julia Westby?" he said. "Um-um-um-um.
Eleven, miss. You might as well give her the title." I laughed and
added, or rather he added, the "Lady."

Julia is not a sister-in-law really, but she likes to call herself so,
since she might have been one, having been for one ecstatic week in
Archie's life engaged to him. She is wont now to lay her hand on his
head, in public, for choice, and say, "He was almost mine." She says
she still loves him as a friend. "But, you see, dearest Betty, there is
everything that is delightful in the relationship of a poor friend, but
a poor husband! That is another thing. To begin with, it is not fair
to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his
character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense,
whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so
delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands
are not supposed to be."

Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby
that night, a darling little baby!

And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be
too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day."

Then Hugh suggested the glorious possibility of the angels bringing
it to Fullfield, whereupon Hyacinth said that was not at all likely,
because she knew that when a baby was born, it was usual for one or
other parent to be present!

We stayed for a few days at Fullfield, and Hugh and Betty enjoyed
themselves immensely. Hyacinth said it was just like staying for a week
at the pantomime, and Betty said, with a deep sigh, that it was much
nicer, a billion times nicer.

Pauline's brother Jack most nearly resembled any one in a pantomime, and
the children loved him. One day at lunch he went to the side-table to
fetch a potato in its jacket, and coming back he laid it on Uncle Jim's
slightly bald head and said, "Am I feverish, father?"

"It Good Heavens, my boy!" exclaimed Uncle Jim; "you must be in an awful
state!"

After that, the eyes of the children never left Jack during any meal
at which they happened to be present, and whenever he got up to fetch
anything, Hugh began dancing with joy and saying in a loud whisper,
"He's going to do something funny"; and if Jack remained silent, Hugh
was sure he was thinking of something to do. It is difficult to live up
to those expectations.

One morning at breakfast Hugh said suddenly, "Aunt Woggles, have you got
a mole?"

I said I believed I had.

"It's frightfully lucky. I have," he said, pulling up his sleeve and
disclosing a mole on his very white little arm. "It is lucky."

"I've got one too," said Betty, diving under the table.

"All right, darling," I said, "you needn't show us."

"I couldn't, Aunt Woggles, at least not now. If you come to see me in my
bath, you can; but it's truthfully there."

I said I was sure it was.

"I 'spect she's sitting on it," said Hugh in aloud whisper; "that's
why."

"We asked Mr. Hardy once if he had a mole, and he got redder and
redder;" we asked him at lunch, said Betty.

"He got redder and redder," said Hugh, by way of corroboration. "Mother
said moles weren't good things to ask people about, so we asked him if
he had any little children, and he hadn't; then we didn't know what to
ask."

"We only asked about moles because we wanted him to be lucky," said
kindhearted Betty.

"Last time I went to the Zoo," said Hugh, "I gave all my bread to one
animal. He was a lucky animal, wasn't he?"

"It was the hippopotamus, I think; he was lucky."

"Perhaps he has a mole, Hugh," I said.

We'll look, said Hugh. "I 'spect he has."

The proverbial difficulty of finding a needle in a haystack seemed
child's play compared to that of finding a mole on a hippopotamus.




Chapter XII


Another aunt, Anna by name, suggested that as I was at Fullfield, I
might take the opportunity of paying her a visit at Manwell, why because
I was at Fullfield I don't know, as they are miles apart, counties apart
I should say. However, I went because it is difficult to refuse Aunt
Anna anything; she accepts no excuses. It is as well for any one who
wishes to see Aunt Anna at her best to see her in her own home. She,
according to Aunt Cecilia, does best in her own soil. Moreover, she is
nothing without her family, it so thoroughly justifies her existence.

Aunt Anna is one of those jewels who owe a certain amount to their
setting.

Her husband calls her a jewel, and as such she is known by the family
in general which recalls to my mind an interesting biennial custom which
was said to hold good in the Manwell family. Every time a lesser jewel
made its appearance, the mother-jewel was presented with a diamond and
ruby ornament of varying magnificence, with the words "The price of a
good woman is far above rubies" conveniently inscribed thereon.

Aunt Anna took it all very seriously, from the tiara downward, and if
diamond and ruby shoe-buckles had not involved twins, I think she would
have hankered after those, but even as it was, she came in time to
possess a very remarkable collection of rubies and diamonds.

Aunt Anna is very prosperous, very happy, very rich, and very contented.

She prides herself on none of these things, but only on the unprejudiced
state of her maternal mind.

"Of course," she says, "I cannot help seeing that my children are more
beautiful than other people's. It would be ludicrously affected and
hypocritical of me if I pretended otherwise. If they were plain, I
should be the first to see it, and--"

I think she was going to add "say it," but she stopped short; she
invariably does at a deliberate lie, because she is a very truthful
woman, and thinks a lie is a wicked thing unless socially a necessity.

I arrived at tea-time which is a thing Aunt Anna expects of her guests.
I noticed that she looked a little less contented than usual, and that
she even gave way to a gesture of impatience when Mrs. Blankley asked
for a fifth cup of tea. Mrs. Blankley is a great advocate of temperance.
In connection with which, Aunt Anna once said that she thought there
should be temperance in all things beginning with "t." Which vague
saying, as illustrative of her wit, was treasured up by her indulgent
husband and quoted "As Anna so funnily said."

Now as Aunt Anna, we know, never says witty things unless under strong
provocation, she rarely says them, for she is of an amazingly even
temperament. She often says she considers cleverness a very dangerous
gift. It is not one I seek for either myself or my children. It is so
easy to say clever, unkind things. Every one can do it if they choose;
the difficulty is not to say them.

It is evident that Aunt Anna chooses the harder part.

Mrs. Blankley, having disposed of the fifth cup of tea, expressed a
desire to see the pigs. Aunt Anna never goes to see pigs, nor demands
that sacrifice of Londoners, for which act of consideration I honor her;
not but what I am fond of pigs, black ones and small. Aunt Anna knows
that there are such things because of the continual presence of bacon
in her midst. She also knows that pigs are things that get prizes.
She still clings to her childish belief that streaky bacon comes from
feeding the pigs one day and not the next.

Every one, like Mrs. Blankley, had a thirst to see something, and I
was left alone with Aunt Anna, to discuss Pauline's wedding. As a
rule, there is nothing Aunt Anna would sooner discuss, but I saw that
something was worrying her, and I guessed that the unburdening of a
rarely perturbed mind was imminent. It was.

"Is anything wrong?--" I asked. "Any of the children worrying you?" She
nodded and pointed to a diamond and ruby brooch and said plaintively.
"This one, Claud, just a little worrying."

I tried to hide a smile. "Oh, that's Claud, is it? I get a little
mixed."

"I dare say, dear," she said; "but it's quite simple, really. Jack was
the tiara, and so on."

"What has Claud been doing?" I asked. "Oh, nothing he can help, I feel
sure. He has a temperament, I believe. What it is I don't quite know;
people grow out of it, I am told. It's not so much doing things as
saying them; and his friends are odd, decidedly odd. They wear curious
ties, have disheveled hair, and are distinctly decollete. I don't know
if I should apply the word to men, but they are."

I suggested that these little indiscretions on the part of extreme youth
need not worry her. But she said they did, in a way, because her
other children were so very plain sailing. They never took any one by
surprise. She then told me of poor Lady Adelaide, a near neighbor, at
least as near as it was possible for any neighbor to be, considering
the extent of the Manwell property, one of whose boys had written a book
without her knowledge, and the other had married under exactly similar
conditions.

I said I thought the writing of a book a minor offense compared to
the matrimonial venture. She agreed, but said they were both upsetting
because unexpected. As an instance, did I remember when Lady Victoria
was butted by her pet lamb, when she was showing the Prince her white
farm? It wasn't the upsetting she minded, so much as the unexpectedness
of it, because the lamb had a blue ribbon round its neck!

"A black sheep in a white farm, Aunt Anna!" I said.

"No, dear, it was white, and it was a lamb."

But to return to Lady Adelaide. Now that Aunt Anna came to think of it,
the marriage was the better of the two shocks, because financially it
was a success, and the book wasn't. "Books aren't," She added.

"Is that all Claud does, or, rather, his friends do?" I asked.

"No, it's not," she said. "Ever since he went to Oxford he has changed
completely. He has got into his head that we are a self-centered family,
and that I am a prejudiced mother, when it is the only thing I am not.
I may be everything else for all I know, I may be daily breaking all
the commandments without knowing it! But a prejudiced mother I am not!
Before he went to Oxford he came into my bedroom one morning, and he
said that he thought Maud and Edith were quite the most beautiful girls
he had ever seen, and he had sat behind some famous beauty in a theatre
a few nights before. I didn't ask him! I was suffering from neuralgia at
the time, I remember, and he might, under the circumstances, have agreed
just to soothe me, but he said it of his own accord, and he wondered if
they would go up to London and walk down Bond Street with him. I said
it should be arranged. They walked with him three times up and down Bond
Street; he only asked for once. I am only telling you this because you
will then realize what this change in him means to me. He came back
from Oxford after one term and he said nothing about the girls' beauty,
although I thought them improved. I didn't say so; I made some little
joke about Bond Street, which he pretended not to understand. So I just
said I thought the girls improved, or rather were looking very pretty,
and he said, 'My dear mother, we must learn to look at these things from
the point of view of the outsider. Place yourself in the position of a
man of the world seeing them for the first time.'"

To begin with, Aunt Anna proceeded to explain, she could never place
herself in a position to which she was not born; she did not think it
right. She said that Claud then urged her to look at it from stranger's
point of view, since that of man of the world was impracticable, which
Aunt Anna said was a thing no mother could do, nor would she wish to do
it. She left such things to actresses. Talking of actresses reminded her
that Claud had even found fault with Maud as an actress, when every
one knew how very excellent she was. Several newspapers, the Southshire
Herald in particular, had alluded to her as one of our most talented
actresses.

"We had a professional down to coach her, and he said there was really
nothing he could teach her. He was a very nice man, and had all his
meals with us. I went," continued Aunt Anna, "to see the great French
actress who was in London in the spring, you remember? And if ever a
mother went with an unprejudiced mind, I was that mother. I was prepared
to think she was better than Maud, and if she had been, I should have
been the first to say it. But she was not, at least not to my mind! Maud
is always a lady, even on the stage, and that woman was not."

I ventured to suggest that she was perhaps not supposed to be a lady in
the part. Aunt Anna said, "Perhaps not, but that does not matter;
Maud would be a lady under any circumstances, whatever character she
impersonated, laundress or lady. Claud says she will never act till
she learns to forget herself I trust one of my daughters will never do
that!"

I strove to pacify Aunt Anna, but her tender heart was wounded and she
was hard to comfort.

"Claud must admire Edith's violin playing," I ventured.

Aunt Anna shook her head. "He begged me to eliminate from my mind all
preconceived notions and to judge her from the unprejudiced point of
view. I told Edith to put away her violin. Claud says I must call it a
fiddle. I could not bear to see it. I never thought there could be such
dissension in our united family."

By way of distraction, I asked if the young man at tea with the
disheveled hair and startlingly unorthodox tie was a friend of Claud's,
and she said, "His greatest!"

At that moment Claud came into the room, wearing a less earnest
expression than usual and Aunt Anna held out a hand of forgiveness. He
warmly clasped it. "Mother," he said, "Windlehurst has just told me, in
strict confidence, that he considers Maud's the most beautiful face he
has ever seen, except, of course, in the best period of ancient Greek
art. I knew you wanted to hear the unprejudiced opinion of an unbiased
outsider."

I wondered how Windlehurst would like the description! Claud went on: "I
think Edith every bit as good looking, more so in some ways. Now that
I have heard an unprejudiced opinion I can express mine, which you have
known all along. You see, mother, people say we are a self-centered and
egotistical family. I have proved that we are not."

"Dear, dearest Claud, your tie is disarranged," murmured his mother,
struggling to reduce it to the dimensions of the orthodox sailor knot.
"Do wait and listen to all dear Betty is telling me of dearest Pauline's
wedding. So interesting. Go on, dear Betty; where had we got to?"




Chapter XIII


My correspondence regarding my summer plans was varied, and the
suggestions contained therein numerous. Here are some of the letters.

Diana's:

Darling Betty,--What do you say to the Cornish coast, coves, cream, and
children! As much of the coast and cream, and as little of the children
as you like! David has a bachelor shoot in view, and I think sea air
would do the children good. I do not propose leaving any nurses at home,
or sending them away; they shall all come and run after Sara should she
get into the sea, when she ought not to, but you and I will have the joy
of watching her. She really is delicious paddling. Think of the
rocks, and the coves, and the sands, and not of the wind or of other
disadvantages that may strike you. As much as you like you shall read,
and whatever you like, so long as you will, at intervals, look up and
smile at me. I shall love to feel you are there, so do come, not as a
professional aunt, as you sometimes describe yourself, but as your own
dear self.

     Your loving
     DIANA

Zerlina's:

Dearest Betty,--I know how difficult you are to find disengaged, but do
try and come to Cornwall with us. The children would love to have you,
and I know you enjoy tearing about after them on the sands! Nurse must
go home for her holiday, and the nursery-maid is so useless. But you
shall do exactly as you like. I know you wouldn't mind if I left you
for a day or two. Jim is so keen that I should go to the Cross-Patches,
being in the neighborhood, more or less. Do write and say you will come.
I do get such headaches at the seaside, and I look so awful when I get
sun burnt, but it suits you.

     Yours,
     ZERLINA

Julia's:

Betty dear,--You have simply got to come. Diana tells me she is asking
you to Cornwall, and that, I know, you will not refuse, because for
some extraordinary reason you can't refuse her anything. Oh! for Diana's
charm for one day a week! What wouldn't I do! That woman wastes her
life; I've always said so. But go to Cornwall, blazes, or anywhere you
like, but come here on your way back--everywhere is on the way back from
Cornwall. Because the house is to be full of William's friends and he
is never perfectly at ease unless there is a bishop among them, and a
bishop drives me to desperate deeds of wickedness. They always like me!
Betty, in your capacity of professional something, think of me. I want
helping more than any one. I don't ask you to give up Cornwall, but
afterwards, don't disappoint your

     JULIA.

A girl's:

Dear Miss Lisle,--I wonder if you will remember me. I am almost afraid
to hope so. But I met you last summer at the Anstells' garden-party,
and you passed me an ice, vanilla and strawberry mixed! I have never
forgotten it. It was not so much passing the ice, lots of people did
that, as the way you did it. I was very unhappy at the time, and there
was something in your expression as you did it that made me feel you
were unlike any one else I had ever met. I wore green muslin!

I am wondering whether you would come to Cornwall, to stay with us.
The coast is lovely, and in its wildness one can forget one's self,
and that, I think, is what one most wants to do! I know what a help you
would be to me, if you could come, and I will tell you all my troubles
when we have been together some days. One gets to know people by the sea
very quickly, I think, don't you? Although I feel as if I had known you
all my life. My hat was brown, mushroom.

     Your sincere friend and admirer,
     VERONICA VOKINS

P. S.--I forgot to say that my father and mother will be delighted to
see you. I have ten brothers and sisters, but there is miles of coast,
and I and my five sisters have a sitting-room all to ourselves. Father
says "he" must pass his examinations first. I tell you this because you
will then understand. "He" won the obstacle race at the Anstells', but
he was in a sack, so I expect you did not notice him!

The big, sad Thomas:

Dear Miss Lisle,--For months, in fact since the day you restored the
screw to my small son, I have been trying to write to you on a subject
that may or may not be distasteful to you. That it will come as a
surprise I feel sure. My love for my boy must be my excuse; nothing else
could justify my writing to any woman as I am about to write to you.
Will you be a mother to my Thomas? It would not be honest on my part
to pretend that I can offer you in myself anything but a very sad and
lonely man, the best of me having gone. No one could ever,--or shall
ever, take the place of my beloved wife in my heart, the remains of
which I offer unreservedly to you. For the sake of my boy I am prepared
to sacrifice myself, and I can at least promise you that you shall never
regret by any action of mine whatever sacrifice it may entail on your
part. I shall not insult you by the mention of money matters or any such
things, for I feel sure that the fact of my being a rich man will make
no difference in your decision as to whether or no you will be a mother
to my Thomas.

     Yours very sincerely,
     THOMAS GLYNNE

Lady Glenburnie's:

Dear Betty,--If you should be in the North,--and why not make a
certainty of it?--don't forget us! A line to say when and where to meet
you is all we want, and you will find the warmest of welcomes awaiting
you, and your own favorite room in the turret. Don't mention nephews or
nieces in answering this.

     Your affectionate
     MARY GLENBURNIE

Brother Archie's:

Angel Betty,--Help a brother in distress. I'm desperately in love. First
of all,--how long do you suppose it will last? Forever, I think. But I
can't live at this pitch for long, and my summer plans depend on it. She
is lovely. Makes me long to sing hymns on Sunday evenings; you know
the kind of thing--feeling, I should say! She's like Pauline, only more
beautiful, I think. I will tell you all about it when we meet. There are
complications. My first trouble is this: I have taken a small place in
Skye with Coningsby. Now it is perfectly impossible to live with Con
when one is in love; of all the unsympathetic, dried-up old crabs, he
is the worst. Now the question is, can I buy him out? Have you to stay
instead, ask my beloved too, save her from drowning, which in Skye
should be easy, and then live happily ever afterwards. I am consumed
with a desire to save her from something. It is a symptom, I know, but,
Betty dear, it is serious this time. Her eyes look as if they saw into
another world, which makes me feel hopeless! I don't mind you hinting
something about it to Julia, if you should see her. You needn't enter
into details!

     Yours ever,
     ARCHIE

Of all the letters, Diana's was the most tempting.

Zerlina's had no power to lure. Dear Archie's little--he had so often
written the same--sort of letters. Veronica Vokins' less, and the sad,
big Thomas! What a curious letter! I hardly knew whether to laugh or to
cry. How careful he was to point out the sacrifice on his part entailed
in his offer. It was hardly flattering to me, except that he refrained
from mentioning his worldly goods, or the advantages to me accruing from
the bestowal thereof. I had at least looked unworldly when I had visited
the small Thomas in bed; of that I was glad. And, after all, why should
I mind? It is something, perhaps, to be asked to be a mother to a small
fat Thomas. I wrote, refusing as kindly as I could. I dare say there are
women who would accept the position. Let us hope, if one be found to do
so, that she will not forget the mother part!

Dear Lady Glenburnie's letter had something of temptation lurking in
it somewhere. The turret room, commanding its views of purple hills and
sunsets, and the warmest of welcomes! But, again, the most aching of
memories. I could not go there again under circumstances so different.
If ever it could be again as it had been, how I should love it! So that
invitation I declined, saying I should be in Cornwall with Diana. Lady
Glenburnie would forgive the mention of Diana, I knew, and of Betty,
Hugh, and Sara I said nothing, as she had stipulated.

Then I wrote to Julia saying I would go to her after I had been to
Cornwall. She might need consoling by then, should Archie have proved
himself recovered of the wounds inflicted by her. This I did not tell
her. If I waited a little, there might be nothing to tell.




Chapter XIV


So to Cornwall I went, and found the sands and the coves and the rocks
and the sea, just as Diana had said, nor was I disappointed in the back
view of Sara with her petticoats tucked into her bathing-drawers. It was
divine. She was delicious, too, paddling, and there were enough nurses
to prevent her doing more, if necessary, and Diana and I could, if we
liked, lie on the sands and watch the children. But it so happens that I
love building castles and making puddings, and, curiously enough, Diana
does too, and we were children once more with perhaps less hinge in our
backs than formerly, but still we enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Betty, the first day, full of faith, tried to walk on the sea, and was
pulled out very wet and disappointed, and her faith a little shaken,
perhaps, for the moment. Hugh told her she didn't have faith hard
enough. "You must go like this," and he held his breath, threatening to
become purple in the face.

"Could you now?" said Betty wistfully, when Hugh was at his reddest.

"No!" he said, "because I burst. Aunt Woggles looked at me when I was
just believing very hard."

Betty forgot that trouble in her infinite delight at discovering where
Heaven really was. She knew if she could just row out to the silver
pathway across the sea, it would lead straight to Heaven. "I know it
would," she said.

Hugh objected because Heaven was in the sky, that he knew! Betty said
how did he know?

"Well, look," said Hugh; "you can see it's all bright and blue and
shining, and angels fly, and you can't fly on the sea, so that shows."

Betty wasn't sure of that because of flying-fish; she'd seen them in
a book where "F" was for flying-fish, so she knew. But Hugh knew that
angels weren't fish, because fish is good to eat and angels aren't.
I was glad the culinary knowledge of Hugh and Betty didn't extend to
"angels on horseback," or where should we have been in the abysses of
argument?

We made expeditions which, as expeditions, were not a success. Sara
objected to leaving the object of her passing affections, a starfish
perhaps, and Hugh and Betty also always found treasures of their very
own, which they must just watch for just a little time, in case they
did something exciting. These things hinder! But still we did sometimes
reach another cove, and one day, in a very secluded one, I caught sight
of a pair of lovers. One can tell the most discreet of them at a glance,
and more than a glance I should never have given this pair had not the
girl, so much of her as I could see under a brown mushroom hat, been
very pretty. Her dress too was green muslin, which was in itself
compelling, and the boy with her, I felt sure, had passed no
examinations. And yet they were deliriously happy, that I could tell.
So the father wasn't so cruel, after all, and I doubted whether I should
have been the comfort to Veronica that she had anticipated. In fact,
I could easily imagine how greatly in the way I should have been. Poor
professional friend! That I had at least been spared from becoming.

Veronica, no less than Betty, had discovered where Heaven really was,
and the boy had a clearer definition of angels than Hugh. Hugh was right
so far--they were in no way related to, or bore any resemblance to,
fish. They were angels pure and simple, and the most beautiful of them,
the most enchanting of them, wore a green muslin and a brown mushroom
hat.

If I had been that young man, I should have objected to the dimensions
of that hat, but he didn't, I suppose. Not having passed his
examinations may have made a difference. He would later on, no doubt. It
is a pity, perhaps, that men have to pass examinations; it robs them of
much of their simplicity.




Chapter XV


Zerlina discovered, to her immense surprise, that she was near enough
to bring all her party to play with ours, and it was arranged that she
should do so on the first fine day.

It so happened that all the days were fine, so every day Diana and I
watched for the small cloud in the distance that should herald their
approach, and one day it appeared, no bigger than a man's hand. When
it came nearer it was considerably bigger, and it finally assumed
the dimensions of Zerlina, Hyacinth, the twins, Teddy, and a small
nursery-maid. Betty was immensely delighted with the twins, her one
ambition in life being to have twins of her own. Failing that, and every
birthday only brought fresh disappointment in its wake, the care of
somebody else's was the next best thing.

They really were delicious people, so round and so solemn. Hugh, for
the moment, was engrossed in Teddy; Teddy having, among other things,
a knife with "things in it," most of which he was mercifully unable to
open. It was the certainty of being able to do so on the part of Hugh,
which made him so deliriously busy. Sara was out of it, having no one
as yet to play with, and she was proud and disdainful in consequence. I
knew that Betty would shortly have one twin to spare, perhaps two, but
this Sara could not guess, knowing nothing of twins.

"Now, Sara," I said, "we will build a castle all for our very own
selves."

"Our velly, velly own selves," said Sara, hugging her spade with
ecstasy. "A velly, velly big castle."

"Very, very big," I replied.

"A bemormous castle?"

"An enormous castle," I said, starting to dig the foundations.

"Dat's a velly, velly vitty hole," said Sara.

"It's going to be a castle, darling."

"For Yaya to live in?"

"Perhaps."

"And Nannie and Aunt Woggles and Hugh and Betty and muvver?"

Sara danced with joy at the prospect, and Sara dancing in
bathing-drawers was distracting. I dug industriously, however, and it
was very hot. Sara looked on, occasionally watering the castle and me
too.

"Not too much water, darling," I said, "because it makes Aunt Woggles so
wet."

Sara subsided for the moment. "Is it a velly big castle?" she asked
every now and then with evident anxiety.

"It's going to be, darling," I said.

"It's a velly, velly small castle now," she said sadly.

I dug harder and harder, and it seemed to me that the castle was
becoming quite a respectable size, but Sara's interest had flagged.

"Aunt Woggles," she said.

"Yes, darling," I answered.

"Sall we dig a velly, velly deep hole, velly, velly deep, for all ve
cwabs, and all ve vitty fish, and Nannie and Aunt Woggles?"

"A very big hole," I said; "but look at the lovely castle!"

"Yaya doesn't yike 'ollid ole castles," she said.

I began to dig a hole. One does these things, I find, for the Saras of
this world, and Sara was for the moment enchanted, but it didn't last
long.

"Yaya's so sirsty," she said. "Yaya wants a 'ponge cake."

"I think you would rather have some milk, darling," I said.

"Yaya's so sirsty," she said in a very sad voice. "Yaya would yike a
'ponge cake!"

"Very well, darling; but don't you want to dig any more?"

"No," she said. "Yaya doesn't yike digging."

Now was that fair?--digging, indeed, when it was the poor aunt who had
been digging all the time. When I told Diana of this she shook her head
and said,-- "Betty, it frightens me. Do you think Sara will grow up that
sort of woman?"

"What sort of woman?"

"Like Polly in Charles Dudley Warner's 'My Summer in a Garden.' You
remember when the husband says, 'Polly, do you know who planted that
squash, or those squashes?'"

"'James, I suppose.'

"'Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. But who
hoed them?'

"'We did.'"

"Well, it seems to me," I said, "that she was rather a delightful
person."

"In a book, absolutely delightful. I am only thinking of Sara's husband,
poor man! You see Polly's husband was an American, and that makes all
the difference. You remember I told you of a man I met who in decorating
his house wanted to have red walls as a background to his beautiful
pictures, and his wife wanted to have green. I asked him what he did,
and he said he made a compromise. I said how clever of him, how did he
do it? and he said, 'We had green!' You see, Betty, what an American
husband means!"

"Well, to return to Sara's, you need not worry. I think he will, in
all probability, be in such raptures over the possession of anything
so delicious as Sara promises to be, that he will overlook these little
pluralities on her part."

"Yes, Betty, of course; but does that sort of thing last?"

"You ought to know, to a certain extent."

"Ah! but then David is such a dear."

"I think it is quite likely that Sara will find a dear too."

"I hope so, oh! how I hope so!" said Diana. "I often wonder what it must
be to find you have given your daughter to some one who is unkind to
her. I can hardly imagine so great a sorrow! I dare not even think of
David the day Betty marries. He says he thinks it must be worse for a
father than a mother."

"I wonder," I said. "I think a mother perhaps has a greater belief in
the goodness of men; a woman, a happy woman certainly, has so little
knowledge of men, other than her own."

"Yes," said Diana, "a good father and a good husband give one a very
deep rooted faith and belief in the goodness of mankind generally. How
we are prosing, Betty!"

Zerlina meanwhile sat on a rock, of the hardness of which she
complained. She found fault with our cove, the sun was too hot and the
wind was too strong. But then she had driven ten miles in a wagonette
under Teddy and the twins, so it was no wonder she grumbled a little.

"I can't think," she said plaintively, "why my hair doesn't look nice
when it blows about in the wind, and I hate myself sun burnt. I can't
bear seeing my nose wherever I look. You and Betty are the stuff martyrs
are made of. It would be comparatively easy to walk to the stake if you
had the right amount of hair hanging down behind; without it, no amount
of religious conviction would avail. Oh dear, I used to have such lots,
before I had measles! I hardly knew what to do with it!"

"That's rather what we find with Betty's," said Diana; "we plait it up
as tight as we can, don't we, darling?" she said, re-tying the ribbon
which secured Betty's very thick pigtail.

"I had twice as much as Betty, at her age, I'm sure," said Zerlina,
forgetting a photograph which stands on Jim's dressing-table, of a small
fat girl with very little hair and that rather scraggy. But what does it
matter? These are the sort of traditions women cling to.

Someone suggested building a steamship in the sand, grown-ups, children,
and all, and Hugh was told to go and make a second-class berth. He
retired to a short distance, and no sound coming from his direction, we
looked round and saw him in ecstatic raptures, rocking himself backward
and forward.

"What are you doing, Hugh?" we said.

"Well," said Hugh, "I was told to make a second-class berth. I suppose
that means twins, and I 'm nursing them."

Zerlina took it quite well, and was easily persuaded that there was no
insult intended to her twins in particular.

A few minutes later Sara appeared, triumphant, having apparently found a
small child to play with.

"Who is your little friend, Sara?" I asked.

She shook her head. She didn't know, but he was delicious to play with
for all that, and she bore him off in triumph.

He was not long unsought, for a young girl came anxiously towards us and
said, "Have you seen a little boy?"

It reminded me a little of the story, the other way round, of a lost boy
who asked a man, "Please, sir, have you seen a man without a little boy,
because if you have, I'm the little boy."

She looked as anxious and as distraught as that little boy must have
looked, I am sure.

"I think," said Diana, "you will find him behind that rock.--Sara,"
called Diana, "bring the little boy here."

A small portion of Sara's person appeared round the rock:--"We're velly
busy," she said.

So rapidly do women make friendships!

"He's quite safe," said Diana; "your little brother, I suppose?"

The girl blushed. "No, I'm his mother," she said.

She looked so young and so pretty, and her hair must have moved Zerlina
to tears, it was so beautiful, and grew so prettily on her forehead. But
she looked too young to be searching for lost babies all by herself.

"How old is he?" asked Diana.

"He's three," she said; then added, "his father never saw him; he went
to the war soon after we were married, and he was killed. Baby is just
like him," and she unfastened a miniature she wore on a chain round her
neck and handed it to Diana.

I am sure Diana saw nothing but a blur, but she managed to say, "You
must be glad! Come and see my little girl, she is very much the same
age."

"What an extraordinarily communicative person!" said Zerlina as they
walked off. "Just imagine telling strangers the whole of your history
like that. I wonder if her husband left her well off."

"Can't you see he did?" I said.

"No; I don't think she is very well dressed, but you never can tell with
that picturesque style of dressing. It may or may not be expensive; even
that old embroidery only means probably that she had a grandmother.
It is a terrible thing for a girl of that age to be left with a boy to
bring up. I know, Betty, just what you are thinking--cold, heartless,
mercenary Zerlina! But I'm practical."

When Diana came back, I could see in her face that she knew all about
the poor little widow. It is wonderful what a comfort it seems to be
even to strangers to confide in Diana. For one thing I feel sure they
know that she won't tell, and that makes all the difference. It is a
relief sometimes to tell some one, although some things can be better
borne when nobody knows. But I imagine there was little bitterness in
the sorrow of this girl widow. She too had learned something from Diana,
for she turned to me and said, "Are you a relation of Captain Lisle?"

"If his name is Archie," I said, "I am his sister."

"I've met him," and she blushed.

This, then, was the girl Archie longed to save from drowning, and who
inspired him with a desire to sing hymns on Sunday evenings. Dear old
Archie! I could imagine his tender, susceptible heart going out to the
little widow. But I said to myself, "It's no good, Archie dear, not yet
at all events, not while she looks as she does over the sea," for I was
sure it was far away in a grave on the lonely veldt that her heart was
buried.

"He is so devoted to children, isn't he?" she said. "He was so good to
my baby. I find that men are so extraordinarily fond of children. I am
afraid they will spoil him."

Whereupon the baby burst into a long dissertation on a present he had
lately received. It sounded something like this:--

"Mormousman give boy a yockerile an a epelan, anye yockerile yanan yan
all over de jurnmer yunder de hoha an eberelyyare."

He then proceeded to turn bead over heels, or try to, and was sharply
rebuked by Sara, who rearranged his garments with stern severity,
and then was about to show him the right method, when she in turn was
stopped by Nannie.

One of the twins arrived at this moment to say that Hugh had called him
bad names. Betty the peacemaker explained that Hugh had called him
a wicket keeper, and the twin had thought he had called him a wicked
keeper. So that was all right. We suggested that, in any case, the twin
wasn't the best person to be wicket keeper. But he went in twice running
to make up, and Hugh gave him several puddings as well. "Puddings," the
nursery-maid explained, were first balls, and didn't count.

"Betty," I said, "you've got a hole in your stocking!"

"I hope it 's not a Jacob's ladder," said Betty.

"Hush, darling, hush," said Hugh; "you know we mustn't be irreverent!"

It was during an interval when we rested and drank milk and ate cake,
those of us who would or could, that we discovered that the little widow
was staying with a very old friend of my father's and mother's.

"And where does Lady Mary live?" asked Diana.

"Just over there. Do come and see her; she will be so delighted to see
you and to show you the garden, which is quite famous."




Chapter XVI


The following day Diana got a delightful letter from Lady Mary asking us
to go to luncheon, or to tea, or to both, or whatever we liked best, so
long as it was at once, and that we stayed a long time, and brought all
the children. She offered to send for us, but going in a donkey-cart was
a stipulation on the part of the children, otherwise they could not or
would not tear themselves away from the sand and all its fascinations.
Sara was particularly offended at having to get out to tea, and more so
at not being allowed to go in her bathing-drawers. But a mushroom hat
trimmed with daisies appeased her, and even at that early age she saw
the incongruity of that hat and those nether garments. They were packed,
Hugh, Betty, Sara, and the nursery-maid, into the donkey-cart. Betty was
supposed to drive, but Hugh and Sara had so large a share in the stage
direction of that donkey, that I wonder we ever arrived. We did.
Our approach was not dignified. The donkey would eat the lawn at the
critical moment, and neither the stern rebukes of Sara, nor the gentle
persuasion of Betty, had any effect; neither, to tell the truth, had the
chastisements of Hugh. Of Diana's efforts and mine it is unnecessary
to speak; they only made us very hot. As to Nannie, she said she would
rather have ten children to deal with.

There were horribly tidy and beautifully dressed people walking about on
the lawn, people who had never, I felt sure, been called upon to speak
unkindly to a donkey. It was a little tactless of them, I thought, in
view of our flushed cheeks, to appear so calm and cool, but they were
quite kind, and I noticed that Diana as usual held a little court of her
own, not entirely as the mother of Sara, either. Hugh and Betty too made
friends, and hearing shouts of laughter coming from Hugh's audience, I
went, aunt-like, to see what was happening, and I heard Hugh saying:--

"I've got another! What did the skeleton--"

"Hugh," I said, "I want you!"

"I'm asking riddles, Aunt Woggles."

"Yes, but have you seen the tortoise?"

The situation was saved.

I look back to the rest of that afternoon, and it is all blur and
confusion. I remember the loveliness of the gardens, the peeps of
distant moorland through arches of pink ramblers. I remember how the sun
shone and how beautiful everything was, and above all and through all
those confused memories I hear the quiet, gentle voice of Lady Mary as
she talked to me of things of which I had thought no one knew anything.
She asked me, I remember, if I would like to see the garden, and I loved
her for her graciousness, her affection, and for her love for my mother.
I could see even in the way she looked at me that it was of my mother he
was thinking, and I remember, in answer to her question whether I liked
the garden, saying I thought it was quite beautiful and so peaceful!

She said, "That is what I feel, the peace of it all. But you, dear
Betty, are too young to feel that. It is as we grow older that the
promise of peace holds out so much. But to the young, life is before
them!"

All that, I remember quite clearly, and a little more. I can still see
Lady Mary, so beautiful, so calm, so confident in the peace which the
future held for her. Then all of a sudden came these words, "Betty, I
liked your hero so much; what happened?"

It was a too sudden opening of prison doors. I was blinded by the light.
I could say nothing. My secret, I felt, was wrested from me. I had
ceased almost to try to hide it, it seemed so safe. What--could I say?

Lady Mary went on: "It is not from curiosity that I ask, but from a very
real and deep interest. Your dear mother used so often to talk of your
future. Her love for you was very wonderful, Betty."

I looked away to the purple hills and longed to escape, but she laid her
hand on mine with a gentle pressure. "I liked him so much. His gentle
chivalry appealed to me; it is a thing one does not meet every day. Some
one, I remember, described him as being as hard as nails and full of
sentiment, which was a charming description of a delightful character
and a rare combination. All women, I think, would have their heroes
strong, and the sentiment makes all the difference in life. If it is
money, Betty dear, as I imagine it is, that must come right. It was
money?"

"His father got into difficulties, no fault of his own, that--and
friends made mischief."

"And he is helping his father," continued Lady Mary. "And while he is
doing that, he thinks he has no right to bind a woman."

How could I say when I didn't know? "Men make that mistake; they forget
how much easier it is for a woman to wait bound than to be free, not
knowing. They don't distinguish between the woman who wants to get
married and the woman who loves. Remember, Betty, how hard it must be
for him. I am not sure that his is not the harder part."

"If he cares," I said.

"I am sure he cares," said Lady Mary softly. "There are secrets that are
not mine, Betty, but there is one that is--the money shall come right. I
had been looking out for a hero for some time when I met yours. This
is strictly between ourselves, and you must remember that all my young
people are so ludicrously well off, that an old woman doing as she likes
with her own will do no one any harm. If I had had children, that, of
course, would have made a difference. To me, who have lived the quiet
life I have lately lived, the soldier, the man of action, appeals very
strongly. Much as I love this place, it seems to me that I should love
it still more if it came as quiet after a storm, a haven of rest after
the battle of life."

Then she spoke of Diana. "Hers is a wonderful character, and I often
think how beautiful it is that she should follow your dear mother at
Hames."

"You feel that?" I said.

"Very, very strongly, dear. How happy it must have made her to feel that
her grandchildren should have such a mother. I may be wrong, and you
will smile at an old woman's prejudice and think that she is looking
back with prejudiced eyes into that wonderful past which is always so
much better than any present. I am not, but still it seems to me that
Diana has something that all young people have not got nowadays, a
reverence for the old, an admiration for the good, and a pity for the
poor and distressed. These things take you far through life, dear, and,
combined with her wonderful vitality and beauty, make her a power.

"Talking of your beautiful mother, it was said years ago that she was
the only woman of whom I had ever been jealous. I am old enough to
tell you these things. It is the privilege of the old to enlist the
sympathies of the young! But it was not true. I had every reason to be
jealous, as had most women I ever saw, but jealousy in connection with
anything so perfect as your mother, I think, was not possible. Her
beauty was of the kind which disarms jealousy. It was beyond comparison
or criticism. It seemed to belong to another world, and yet she was so
tender to the sinners, so understanding, so full of loving kindness.
Hers was a beauty of the soul as well as the body, and that beauty is as
remote from the everyday prettiness as the earth is from the stars. Her
expression had something of the divine in it, as if she had seen God
face to face. I see the same look coming in Diana's face. Old Sir George
used to say it would be worth committing a sin to be forgiven by your
mother. He said her look was a benediction."

As I said good-by to Lady Mary, she held my hand and said, "Betty dear,
you will some day forgive an interfering old woman, and in days to come,
when you look to these distant hills, you will remember this day with a
kind thought for your beautiful mother's old friend."

"Isn't Lady Mary a darling?" said Diana, as we walked home through the
scented lanes on that most wonderful of summer evenings. "You look as if
you had been seeing visions, Betty, quite dazed like, as Nannie used to
say."

"I often see visions," I said.

"Have you been crying, Aunt Woggles?" said Hugh. "Were all the peaches
gone when you got back?"

Betty slipped her little hand into mine. "You promised to let me walk
with you for a little. Shall we pick honeysuckle, supposing we see any?"

"Yes, we will, darling."

"Supposing you can't reach it," she said.

"There is always some within reach."

"I suppose grown-ups can always reach things," said Betty.

Later, in the quiet darkness of the night, I could picture the garden,
the roses, the distant moor, Lady Mary's beautiful face, but I could not
bring myself to believe that I had really heard those words, "I am sure
that he cares."

Surely I had dreamed them, or Lady Mary had, because if they were true,
why had he said nothing? How should he have told her what he could not
tell me?




Chapter XVII


Then came that wonderful morning on which I read that Captain Paul
Buchanan was coming home, was expected to arrive that very day. I opened
the paper at breakfast, as usual and my eyes caught the word that at
any time had the power to set my heart thumping and to send the blood
rushing to my head, a word common enough, and which to most people,
beyond relating to a country always interesting, means little--Africa.
It is curious that a day that is to change the whole of one's life
should begin exactly like any other day. Of the most important things we
have no premonition, most of us.

That what I longed and prayed for every hour of my life should come to
pass was not wonderful, but that a day on which I was to be called to
make the greatest sacrifice of my life should steal stealthily upon me
seems strange.

That morning when I came downstairs, my little house in Chelsea looked
exactly like it always had done. The sun shone as the sun does shine
in the early winter in London, and no more, until after I had read that
paragraph; then, behold a new world was born. Why had my eyes been
blind to the gloriousness of the morning? Why had I thought the day an
ordinarily dull one with just the amount of pale sunshine which is meted
out to those happy people who are wise enough to live within easy reach
of the river? Yes, I know, some people do say that Chelsea is foggy.

It depends so much on their lives. No place could be foggy to me that
day. My fear was that Nannie should read the news in my face. I looked
away when she said, "Anything in the paper?" as she had said a hundred
times before. She always came to see me eat my breakfast, so she said,
but I knew it was really to hear the news. I handed her the paper,
although I hated to let the words out of my sight, and she glanced at
it. She paused and walked to the window. Kind Nannie, she was giving me
time. She blew her nose, she was crying, she knew. A double knock at the
door brought my heart to a standstill. Lady Mary was right, he did care.
It seemed hours before the telegram was brought to me. I hardly dared
to open it. There is some happiness too great to bear. I opened it and
read:--


Sara very ill. Come at once.

      DIANA

"Nannie," I said, "I am going to Hames."

"To-day?" she said. She knew it was my day of days.

"I must, Nannie. Will you come?"

"No; I'll stay here. Poor Mrs. David, whatever will she do?"

I could hardly imagine, and I am glad to remember that my sorrow seemed
a small thing compared to hers.

It would be impossible for me to describe that journey. The train crept
along. It seemed to stop hours at the station. No one seemed to remember
that Sara was ill. I felt the grip of a cold hand on my heart. Should
I ever arrive? I did at last, and found a groom waiting for me at the
station, with a dogcart. His mouth twitched, and he could hardly control
his voice to tell me that there was no fresh news. The carriages were
wanted for the doctors; did I mind the dogcart? Mind? I could have urged
the horse to a gallop, and yet I dreaded to arrive.

It was strange to pass through the quiet, deserted hall, up the stairs,
and to hear no sound. A nurse opened a door and spoke in a whisper. I
went into the room, and not until I saw Diana, so lovely in her grief,
did I realize the agony of her suffering. She put out her hand and
silently pressed mine. I turned away so that she should not see my face.

A man, a stranger to me, sat by the bedside, his eyes fixed on the child
lying there. He was the great London doctor, in whom I could see all
hope was centered. There were other doctors and nurses, I believe, but
it all seemed confusion to me now; but poor, broken hearted Nannie I
remember. She stood at a distance. Not a sound was uttered, and I took
up my watch with the others, to watch that precious life ebbing away.
The soft flitting backward and forward of nurses, a word now and then
from the great man who held not only the life of Sara in his hands, but,
it seemed to me, the life of my beautiful Diana, only broke the intense
silence. The night came on and we still watched.

The doctor's face became sterner and graver and the little life weaker,
or so it seemed to me. Diana knelt at the side of the bed. She never
moved.

As the dawn broke, Sara opened her eyes and said, "Nannie."

Diana rose and beckoned to Nannie. Nannie hesitated, and Diana, taking
her hand, whispered, "Dear Nannie, I am so glad," and gave up her place.
It is not given to all of us to reach great heights, but Diana at that
moment, I think, reached the divine in human nature. Then came the
moment, too wonderful to think of, when the doctor told Diana that the
great danger was over.

Later he said to David, "My boy, you have given your children the
greatest of all blessings in their mother. Thank God for her every
moment of your life. I've seen many mothers and many sick children,
but--thank God, and don't forget it."

Dear David, I think most of us thank God oftener than we know and in
many and divers ways, and I am not sure that David does not do it every
time he looks at Diana.




Chapter XVIII


Sara, having got over the crisis and being on the fair road to
recovery,--children recover quickly,--my heart turned towards home--and
a longing to get back obsessed me. I could think of nothing but home,
now that Diana's immediate need of me was over. She begged me to stay
with her. To fail her at such a moment was a great grief to me, but I
could make no further sacrifice. I must go home.

"I must go, David," I urged.

"Of course, if you must, you must, Betty, but I should have thought
after all Diana has gone through, you would have stayed with her. You
have always been so much to each other."

How he hurt me, as if I wouldn't do anything in the world for Diana; but
I must go home.

"David," I said in desperation, "I must go. If I promise to come back
directly, you won't misunderstand my going?"

"I'll try to understand, Betty, that you have some very strong reason
for going back."

"Thank you, David," I said.

"But," he continued, "you must tell Diana yourself."

I went to her room, where she was lying down. "Diana, darling," I said,
"I want very much to go home, if only for a day."

"Of course, Betty, you must go. But don't look so distressed. I must
have been selfish if I gave you the impression that I would not let you
go. It is only that I love so having you, you are such a rock, and
oh! it seems like some awful and terrible dream we have been through,
doesn't it? Sara asked for her darling bunny today. Think what that
means! Darling Betty, I pray that some great happiness may come to you
some day. I begin to believe that the greatest joys come through the
greatest sorrows."

"Don't, Diana," I whispered. "I can't bear you to be too kind. I suppose
it's all we've been through, but I feel."

"I know, Betty," she whispered. "I lie here too tired to do anything but
thank God. I ache with thankfulness, for you among other blessings. Come
back soon."

"What did Diana say?" asked David, who was waiting outside the door.
"Did she understand?"

"Understand? Did you ever know a time when Diana didn't understand?"

I went. Oh, the joy of setting out towards home! That ridiculously small
house in Chelsea in which were centered all my hopes. Some word might
be there waiting for me. Nannie might have thought nothing of sufficient
importance to forward at such a moment. How I hoped that was it, and
that it might be there, else all my hopes were shattered.

I opened the door with my latchkey. I looked. No telegram lay on the
table; that I saw at a glance. Then Nannie appeared. She was crying.

"Nannie," I said, "don't cry, she is much better, and is going to get
quite well; only I had to come home."

How explain to Nannie that I had left Sara and Diana at such a moment!

"Your bat's crooked," said Nannie.

"You ridiculous old person," I said, "what does that matter?" Nannie
sniffed. I put my hat straight. "Is that better?"

"Yes, it's better, it'll do," she answered, not quite satisfied,
evidently. I wondered why she asked no questions. Why had I come home to
this? No wonder David had been surprised at my leaving Diana! What was
the use?

Then Nannie said with a startling suddenness, "Some one is waiting for
you upstairs."

"Someone for me, Nannie. What do you mean?"

"He's waiting," she said, between laughter and sobs. "He's waiting."

I often wonder how I had the strength to go upstairs and open the
door. But I did, and there surely enough he stood, only a few feet of
green-painted boards separating us. How I crossed them I never knew. He
came halfway, no doubt.

I should never have done the journey alone, and I wondered too how it
was we met as lovers! That was the most wonderful part of all. How, when
I did not even know that he cared, could it have happened? It was all
too wonderful, and I was too dazed with happiness to question anything
at the moment. I only knew that the world had become a paradise, and
that the past years of doubt and perplexity had fallen away like a
disused garment.

Then we began to talk, and the mystery deepened. He spoke of a telegram.
I had never received one! And my telegram? I had never sent one! He
laughed, and when I said I didn't understand, he said what was the use
of understanding when knowing was sufficient?

It was all very puzzling, but I was content. There was so much to talk
of, so many explanations to make and to hear! But in time we came back
to the telegram. There had been no such thing!

He laughed. "I have it here," he said, putting his hand on his
coat-pocket.

"Show it to me," I pleaded.

Never; it was his, and his alone.

"But nothing is yours now that is not mine," I urged, "at least, if you
have asked me to marry you."

"Betty," he said, "I quite forgot. I came home for the express purpose
of doing so. I have thought and dreamed of nothing else, all through the
long marches in Africa; all the way home I have thought of that and of
your answer. Betty, will you marry me?"

"I shall be delighted, Captain Buchanan. But where is my telegram to
you, your telegram to me?"

"It. I think Nannie must have one."

"And did she answer it? Oh, what did she say?"

"Never mind; she said exactly the right thing. Don't let's discuss
Nannie's telegram when we have to make up for the silence of years!
O Betty! shall I wake up?"

A little later he said, "Tell me, did you care that night at the
Frasers'?"

I said I never remembered a time when I didn't care.

"O Betty! if only you hadn't been so proud!"

"Or you so horribly ununderstandable!"




Chapter XIX


"You wonderful Nannie," I said later, as I sat at her feet, "how did you
do it?"

"Quite easily," said Nannie. "When I saw that you must go to Hames, as
of course you had to, I thought to myself, I'll wait! Years ago my lady
said to me, I Nannie, don't let my child throw away her own chance of
happiness. I feel that a day may come when she will be called upon to
make a sacrifice, and she will make it, regardless of her own feelings.
You were always giving up your toys and things to the boys; that's what
made your mother think of it. The day she spoke of came the morning the
telegram came from Hames. I had been waiting and waiting so as to be
sure to do what your mother told me, and the day came. You see, I saw
the paper, and I knew!"

"How, Nannie? No one knew, I thought."

"Ah, nannies know things; much use they'd be in this world if they
didn't? I know lots of things I'm not supposed to! Well, I waited, and
no telegram came from him that day. There were all sorts of things about
him in the evening paper, being a hero and a lion and all those sort of
things. Then the next day the telegram came. The ship had been late; you
never can tell with ships. Leave ships to sailors, I say. Well, I opened
the telegram. It said, 'Will you see me if I come straight to you?' or
some such words, and I answered it."

"What did you say, Nannie?"

"I don't see that that matters. There's nothing in words, and I'm no
scholar."

"Nannie dear, it does matter. It meant everything in the world to me. If
only you knew how happy I am, how ridiculously happy."

"It's all right, then. I've done what she said." A rapturous smile
illuminated her old face.

"All right, Nannie?"

Only a hug can express some things. Nannie straightened her cap. "Well,
then," she said, drawing herself up, "I couldn't do it for sixpence,
it cost ninepence halfpenny. I said, 'Come. Been waiting for you for
years.'"

"Nannie!" I exclaimed.


THE END










End of Project Gutenberg's The Professional Aunt, by Mary C.E. Wemyss

*** 