Books: The Professional Aunt
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Mary C.E. Wemyss >> The Professional Aunt
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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.
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