“Please, please, Aunt Sophy,” said that young person, rushing up at the moment.
“Hold yourself erect, my dear; don’t run quite so fast. There! you have got a rent already in your new frock. Now what do you want?”
“May I be a schoolroom little girl in the future?”
“What are you now?”
“Nursey says I’m nursery. But I don’t want to be nursery; I want to stay always with my own good Aunty Sophy. That is what I want. May I be a schoolroom child?”
“In the first place, you are not to call me ‘aunty.’ I am Aunt Sophia to you. I dislike abbreviations.”
“What’s them?”
“Say, ‘What are they?’”
“What are they?”
“I will tell you another time. How old are you, Penelope?”