“Gracious!” I said; “what had the baby been doing?”
“Nothink,” she said, and relapsed into silence.
It does not bear comment; it hardly bears thinking of.
Less pathetic, perhaps, but yet touching in its way, was a remark reported to me from another Infant School. A little boy was gazing at a wall-picture of a bear. The mistress asked what he would do if he met a creature like that.
“I’d run away.”
“But the bear can run ever so quick, and he would catch you.”
The infant pondered on the clumsy-looking beast; calculated its rate of speed by some method of his own, and finally replied:
“He wouldn’t; not if I ’ad my mended boots on.”
A pleasanter reminiscence from the same town. It was in the babies’ room: I was talking to the mistress, when suddenly a baby made a remark to the class-teacher, and both teachers exploded in hastily suppressed laughter. “What did the baby say?” I asked.
“She saw you coming in, Mr. Kynnersley, and she said, ‘Is that my daddy?’”