Zerlina cannot see that it is not exactly a position of a woman's
own choosing, although under strong pressure she has been known to
admit that there have been cases in which women have been made
aunts whether they would or no; and she thinks it is perhaps by
way of protest against such usage that they so shamefully neglect
their duties in that walk of life to which their bothers and
sister-in-law have seen fit to call them.

Of course, when an aunt marries, she loses at once all the
perfecting of the properly constituted aunt; and that is a thing
to be seriously considered. Is she wise in leaving a profession
for which all her sisters-in-law think she is admirably fitted,
for one which the most experienced pronounce a lottery?

This is all of course written from Zerlina's point of view. She
requires of a professional aunt many things. She must, to begin
with, remember the birthdays of all her nephews and nieces, of
Zerlina's children in particular. If she remembers their
birthdays, it stand to reason, Zerlina's reason, that the sequence
of thought is - presents.

The really successful aunt knows the particular taste of each
nephew and niece. She knows, moreover, the exact moment at which
the taste changes from a love for woolly rabbits to a passion for
steam engines. Instinct tells her at what age a child maybe
promoted, with safety, from wool to paint, and she knows the
critical moment in a boy's life when a Bible should be bestowed.
It usually, or perhaps I should say my experience is that it
usually, follows the first knife, an ordinary two-bladed knife,
and comes the birthday before a knife -- with things in it." The