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CHILDREN.
Children are troublesome comforts — no mistake about that.
I always believed it, and lately I 've had a new revelation —
not exactly of the kind the angel Gabriel gave Mahomet, either.
When I want to go out, it 's “Here, Nell, can't you take
little Tom with you?” or, “Nell, if you could wait a few moments,
here is Herbert wants to go to sleep, and you can still
him quicker than anybody!”
I 'm a feminine Job, naturally, but I must confess it puts
even me out of patience, sometimes. Just to think of having my
new sky-blue barège consecrated with tears and molasses, to say
nothing of the way my white bonnet-ribbons are tugged at,
when I enter the house, by half a score of urchins afflicted with
pinafores, and a “What-have-you-brought-me” fever. I used
to pride myself on immaculate white kids; but I had to give
that up, long ago! I 'd just like to see what one of those model,
sweet-tempered Lady Esmonds would do, if she had my daily
penance to go through with — if she found Honiton lace collars
cut up for flounces to doll-baby ball-dresses, new silks maple-sugared
with innumerable little finger-prints, velvet mantillas
spread out on the bushes to bleach, and my sanctum sanctorum
drawer of fineries turned into a menagerie!
Heigho! But I 've learned to bear it with all the patience
now-a-days.
But that 's not the worst of it — I 've got a beau! It 's funny
I should have, — every time I look in the glass I think how
funny it is, — but no less true than strange!
Of course, Tom, and Will, and Herbert, and the rest, must
needs have free entrée of mamma's parlor, and I can't say a
word.
But just imagine my dismay when, at the breakfast-table,
some cunning little mouth cries out, “O, mamma, don't you
think, Mr. Smith never kissed us once! Should n't you thought
he might, when he kept kissing Aunt Louise all the evening?”
You know it 's not very fashionable to blush, — shockingly
old-fashioned, indeed, — but, I 'm rather unfashionable on some
occasions.
And yet, after all, there is no more devoted lover of children
than I am, in the main.
Dear, sweet little denizens of a world we are not pure enough
to inhabit any longer!
I saw one on the Common the other day, — I was walking with
him — I shan't tell you who he is though, — and suddenly, somewhat
to his surprise, I came to a “dead halt” before a little
two-wheeled baby-wagon. But such a beauty! “What is her
name?” I asked. “Annie,” was the reply.
I ought to have known before asking, for the name fitted the
little, rosy, darling gypsy completely.
She was a poor person's child, one could see by all her
appointments; but she was graceful as an opium reverie.
Such a forehead as the tangled curls o'ershadowed; and such
rose-bud mouth as it had; and, though it did laugh, I must
needs stop to kiss it.
Sweet Annie! Little truant sunbeam! I wonder if thou
wilt ever again smile on my life-path?
This world has a great many roads, and much I wonder if
thou and I will ever again travel the same?
I wonder if thou art destined to look on human hearts, and
melt them with thy great eyes! If it be thine to write thy
name upon the age, with high thoughts and lofty deeds; or, perchance,
if thou art holding one end of a golden chain, with which
God's angels shall ere long draw thee to Heaven; while green
grass and violets shall wave round a white headstone, on which
stranger hands have graven “Annie!” I cannot say, — it may
be that some other day, when thou and I are both older, I may
pause again by the way-side to look upon thy beauty; or, it may
be, we meet on earth no more, — but, God be thanked, after the
day comes night, and there is one hostel for both of us at our
journey's end!
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