Babies in the Sun
Fat babies, white dogs running, nursemaids with the wind pulling at their snuff-coloured veils, and at least six sharp intervals of sun strong enough to paint three shadows on the grass. That was how Kensington Gardens looked the other day, that delicious annexe to a thousand nurseries, that lovely land of young things insulated from our common world by a row of spiked railings.
I went up the Broad Walk revelling in this untroubled side of life, joyfully appreciating other people's babies, patting other people's dogs, admiring a smart turnout that lacked only a crest on the dove-grey perambulator, noting with pleasure the tall, neat young Kensington mothers with their lamp-post figures in well-cut tweed. When the sun came through it was like a game of musical chairs. The nursemaids stopped perambulating. Wind-blown walkers came to a standstill. They sat down on green seats.
So did I.
Next to me was a maiden of about three, a little unopened rose-bud of a girl, whose crisp gold hair escaped from a woollen cap with a yellow woollen tuft on top like a tangerine. Her short legs, in grey woollen trousers, stuck out in space so that she, sitting on a grown-up's seat, was in exactly the same position she would have assumed had she been sitting on a floor! Her brother was perhaps five. He wore a peaked cap of corduroy, leggings, and a little fawn coat with an absurd belt at the back.
These two were holding hands, a difficult feat, I imagine, when hands are so small and woollen gloves so bulky and fluffy. They were discussing railway travel. He said that the carriage wheels say "lickety-lick, lickety-lick," which I thought was very true, but she, womanlike, contradicted him, saying that they go "tell-at-a-train, tell-at-a-train," which I thought also was very true. Then suddenly he said loudly three times, because his nurse was reading a novel:
"Nannie," he said, "I'm going to marry Madge!"
She looked shocked, put down the novel, and said:
"No, Master John, little boys don't marry their sisters, ever."