behind the cushion when any one comes into the room. As she grows
older and more professional, and the nephews and nieces become
more numerous, she will give up hiding her work. People who are
intimately connected with the family will show no surprise, and to
inquisitive strangers, unless she is very religious, she can
murmur something about a crèche, so long, of course, as Zerlina is
not there.

The really successful aunt, one who is at the top of her
profession, can perfectly well be trusted to take all the children
to the Zoo alone; that is to say, without a nurse, and of course
without the mother. The mother knows how pleased and gratified an
aunt feels on being given the entire charge of the children. The
nurse is gratified too; in fact every one is pleased, with perhaps
the exception of the aunt. But it is against professional
etiquette for her to say so. She only wonders why mothers think a
privilege they hold so lightly -- taking the children to the Zoo -
- should be so esteemed by other women. But as the old story goes,
"Hush, darling, hush, the doctor knows best," so must we say, --
Mothers know best."

Another qualification in a professional aunt, desirable if not
indispensable, is tact. If she should be possessed of ever so
little, it will save her a considerable amount of bother. She
won't, in a moment of mental aberration, praise dark-eyed children
to Zerlina, whose children have blue eyes. Should she do so, by
some unlucky chance, it would take several expeditions to the Zoo,
and probably one to Kew, before things were as they were. If
Zerlina, however, should, by the expedition of the aunt and
children to Kew, be enabled to do something she very much wanted