involuntarily of the "slime which the aspic leaves upon the caves of
Nile." Many of us have been Anglo-Indian babies. Was there a time
when we suffered caresses such as these? What a happy thing it is
that Lethe flows over us as we emerge from infancy, and blots out all
that was before. Another question has been stirring in my mind since
that scene. What feeling or motive prompted those luscious
blandishments? Was it simple hypocrisy? I do not think so. The
pure hypocrite is much rarer than shallow people think, and, in any
case, there was no inducement to make a display in my presence. What
influence could I possibly exercise over the fortunes of that great
female? A maternal hippopotamus in the Zoo would as soon think of
hugging a young giraffe to propitiate the spectators. Of course you
may take up the position that the hypocrisy is practised all day
before her mistress, and that the mere momentum of habit carries it
on at other times. This is plausible, but I suspect that such a case
would rather come under the fundamental law that action and reaction
are equal and opposite. Let us be charitable and look for better
reasons. The mere milk of human kindness explains something, but not
enough, and I am inclined to think that the Ayah is the subject of an
indiscriminate maternal emotion, which runs where it can find a
channel. The effect of culture is to specialise our affections and
remove us further and further from the condition of the hen whose
philoprogenitiveness embraces all chicks and ducklings; so it may
well be that the poor Ayah, who has not had much culture, is better
able than you or I to feel promiscuously parental towards babies in
general, at least, if she can connect them in any way with herself.
Towards babies in the care of another Ayah she has no charity; they
are the brood of a rival hen and she would like to exterminate them.
Again, we must love and hate, if we live at all. The Ayah's horizon
is not wide, her sentiments are neither numerous nor complex, and her