Gardens, or other public promenades, escorting their little _bâbâs_,
and herding together, like birds of a feather, attracted by the bonds
and recollections of colour, climate, caste, and language.

Ayah, in the mouth of a lisping baby, is one of the prettiest words of
the East, and is learned as soon as papa and mamma, being equally easy
of articulation. The origin of the word is probably either Portuguese
or Spanish (_aya_), although it has now become common to all classes,
Christians, Mohammedans, and Hindoos alike. The Hindostanee word for
nurse is _m[=a]m[)a]-jee_, or _daee_; the Bengalee, _doodoo_, or
_dye_.

[Transcriber's Note: Two diacritical marks are found above
the letter "a" in the word "mama-jee" in the previous
sentence. They are a macron diacritic, a dash-shaped symbol
and a breve diacritic, a u-shaped symbol. These letters are
indicated here by the coding [=a] for a macron and [)a] for
a breve above the letter "a".]

The ayah is frequently a fixture of long standing in a family,
descending from mother to daughter; and when this is the case, she is
no doubt a valuable possession, and is consulted in all the momentous
matters connected with the nursery. However, at the birth of the first
baby, she is of course spick-and-span new; and in comes the dusky
stranger, all pride and expectation, all hope and joy. It is fortunate
that there is no difference in young babies--that the one is as ugly a
little thing as the other--and so she is not disappointed: on the
contrary, she sees with one glance of her dark glittering eyes, which
have their source of sensation in her woman's heart, a thousand charms
that distinguish _her_ bâbâ from all the other babies in the universe.