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?