“Well, what luggage have you brought?”
“Twelve hat-boxes,” promptly replied Reggie with a flicker of humour just lighting up his face. One turned up, and was found to contain the entire clothing, etc., of the pair. This vast piece of luggage was put in Baby’s room, and then came the request that they might be allowed to unpack for themselves. Reggie was quickly hurried into his own room with his tiny pile of belongings, and then Baby began to unpack hers. She was shown a large wardrobe, as well as a good-sized chest of drawers, and evidently felt that it would be infra dig. not to use them both, so, after putting one wee garment in one drawer and one in another till each held something, she gravely took the little bag which held her shoes and hung it up in solitary grandeur in the wardrobe!
The extreme politeness and consideration of these little visitors were continually coming out. Baby was asked whether she would like a room to herself or a sofa in her hostess’s room.
“You see, Aunt E., I don’t know what to say,” was the reply. On being pressed further, she said, “Well, I was thinking about the beds! It seems a good deal of trouble just for us. You see, they are big beds.”
Reggie, too, was just as anxious to consider others. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” he said, on being asked whether something should be brought him. “I’m afraid when we are gone you will say ‘bother those troublesome children’!”
He was just as attentive, too, to his sister, buttoning her little petticoat for her and anything she couldn’t manage for herself.
The whole of the proceedings described so far were practically part of a charade or play. The children were for these two days grown-up people, and being endowed with an extra allowance of imagination, played their part in every detail.
Not that they could keep it up quite all the time! There were games at hide-and-seek that entirely dispelled illusion for a while. Then there were visits to the poultry yard and animals, when it was impossible to put such restraint upon one’s feelings of surprise and delight as to appear properly blasé and grown up. For instance, when Baby suddenly discovered a large field-spider, there was a scream of astonishment as she exclaimed, “Oh, Aunt E., here’s a thing with a lot of legs and a dot in the miggle!” And again, in the poultry yard, it was scarcely in keeping with the part of a lady who had arrived at years of discretion to say, “How I should like to lay in those nice lickle nests!”
The Children Leave.
But on the whole these two little people carried out their intention of paying a real grown-up visit with perfect success up to the very moment when they were once more in the train by themselves on their return journey of some six miles, each one grasping firmly their half-ticket, and the last glimpse we had was of Reggie gravely lifting his little straw hat, as the train steamed out of the station. There is all the difference in the world between this sort of playing at being grown up, and the assumption of airs and graces which some children display. The one is real pleasure, the other the merest mockery. Children who are no sooner out of the nursery than they ape their elders in an insatiable desire for a succession of smart clothes and evening parties are seldom happy children. Those who care for their little ones and want to fill their early years with real pleasures will take care to avoid the causes which produce children such as these.