sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite intelligible to elders.
Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother who had, it seems,
allowed her family to see that she was inclined to be satisfied with
something of her own writing. The child has a full and gay sense of the
sweetest kinds of irony. There was no need for her to write, she and her
mother being both at home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy
of a pen:--"My dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that
article, if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a
unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not
write any more such unconventionan trash."

This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister,
and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew just how old she
is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They can see she is
pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward baby."

Thus speak the naturally unreluclant; but there are other children who in
time betray a little consciousness and a slight _mefiance_ as to where
the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, obscure. These
children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking in their talk,
but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word of which they do
not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness was barely enough
to cause her to stop to choose between two words, was wont to bring a cup
of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who had often feigned
indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the
infusion." "I'm afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and
then, in a half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not
told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup
left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh"
thenceforward.