Thus speak the naturally unreluctant; 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.




CHILDREN IN MIDWINTER


Children are so flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise to
see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their colour,
their fulness--which is like that of a thick rose or of a tight
grape--look out of season. Children in the withering wind are like the
soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford Street, breathing
a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than
warmth in the cold, something more subtly out of place and more
delicately contrary; and that is coolness. To be cool in the cold is the