and further it doesn't go."

"Do you love Moses, mummy?" asked the May baby, jumping into my lap, and
taking my face in both her hands--one of the many pretty, caressing
little ways of a very pretty, caressing little creature.

"Yes," I replied bravely, "I love him."

"Then I too!" they cried with simultaneous gladness, the seal having
thus been affixed to the legitimacy of their regard for him. To be of
such authority that your verdict on every subject under heaven is
absolute and final is without doubt to be in a proud position, but, like
all proud positions, it bristles with pitfalls and drawbacks to the
weak-kneed; and most of my conversations with the babies end in a sudden
change of subject made necessary by the tendency of their remarks and
the unanswerableness of their arguments. Happily, yesterday the Moses
talk was brought to an end by the April baby herself, who suddenly
remembered that I had not yet seen and sympathised with her dearest
possession, a Dutch doll called Mary Jane, since a lamentable accident
had bereft it of both its legs; and she had dived into the schoolroom
and fished it out of the dark corner reserved for the mangled and thrust
it in my face before I had well done musing on the nature and extent of
my love for Moses--for I try to be conscientious--and bracing myself to
meet the next question.

"See this poor Mary Jane," she said, her voice and hand quivering with
tenderness as she lifted its petticoats to show me the full extent of
the calamity, "see, mummy, no legs--only twowsers and nothing further."

I wish they would speak English a little better. The pains I take to