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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.
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.
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? 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.
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?"
Abraham Lincoln was summoned in from his rail-splitting, which he had been pursuing quite leisurely during the Deacon's absence, and stirred to spasmodic energy under Maria's driving to cut an additional supply of dry wood, and carry it into every room in the house, where little Sammy Woggles, the orphan whom the Deacon and Mrs. Klegg were bringing up, built cheer-shedding fires. Mrs.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?"
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