The same child was to be
soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been drowned in
the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that she should
forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay subject--her
wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, "what I should
like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a whistle!" Her mother
was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer
as to the dolls. But the whistle seemed practicable. "It is for me to
whistle for cabs," said the child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go
to parties." Another morning she came down radiant, "Did you hear a
great noise in the miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried
because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his
nose."
The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, nothing
feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than you," is the word
of a very young egotist. An older child says, "I'd better go, bettern't
I, mother?" He calls a little space at the back of a London house, "the
backy-garden." A little creature proffers almost daily the reminder at
luncheon--at tart-time: "Father, I hope you will remember that I am the
favourite of the crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent
the naif things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home,
he would hardly light upon the device of the little _troupe_ who, having
no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of--candle-shades!
"It's _jolly_ dull without you, mother," says a little girl who--gentlest
of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she makes no
secret.
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