off my father wrote and apologised. Babies hate fussiness. But who realises that? Every morning it is, “How has he slept, nurse?” “How is his little inside, nurse?” “How is his precious outside, nurse?” “Has that mark where the cat scratched him gone, nurse?” “Did I hear him crying at half-past four, nurse?” “Isn’t he strangely silent this morning and puffy under the eyes, nurse?” and so forth, and so forth. I often wonder why my nurse hangs on at all. My nursemaid asked her the same question once, when she and my mother had differed about some little matter involving magnesia; and the nurse explained that she stopped for two reasons: because she got thirty pounds a year for doing so, and because she felt it would be next thing to murder to leave me until my mother knew her business. But, mind you, I want to be just to both my parents. My mamma can sing me to sleep with considerable skill; my papa can pick me up and fling me towards the ceiling with a nerve and strength that causes me infinite gratification when I am in the vein. But even upon a simple thing like that he exercises no discretion. There are occasional times when a chap doesn’t care to be flung up to the ceiling. How would he like it, for instance, the next moment after he had drunk his bottle, or whatever might be the equivalent with him? Then my mother will interfere with the temperature of my bath. She has a conviction, amounting to mania, that some day I shall be boiled alive or scalded to death. Her idea seems to be that I should sit quietly and patiently while this painful operation was being performed, and suffer nobody to hear anything of it until I was cooked to a turn. The result of her alarm is that I rarely get my dip at a tidy temperature, though everybody likes a real hot bath now and again. Thank Heaven, they will grow older, these parents of mine. With years must surely come experience and wisdom and patience. At present--and I say it without the least animus--I would not give a broken rattle for the united knowledge of the pair of them.