In this fortnight the baby’s understanding of us and feeling of nearness to us were noticeably greater. Her attachment to her favorites was striking. She would cling to us with all the strength of her little arms, sometimes pressing her lips against our faces in a primitive sort of kiss. Her desire for our attention was intense--little arms stretched out, face full of desire, while she uttered urgent cries. Now and then she was entirely unwilling to eat a meal till the person she had set her heart on at the moment had yielded to her pleading, and come to sit close beside her, for company. She understood one or two little directions--“by-by,” and “patacake”; or, at least, associated them with the acts. She had some idea of what “No, no!” meant, and she knew perfectly that she must not keep paper or flower petals in her mouth, and after biting off a bit would put out her tongue, laughing, to have the forbidden scrap removed. And one day when I said to her, “Don’t you want to come to aunty?” without any gesture, she surprised me by leaning forward and putting out her hands to me, exactly as if I had reached my arms out for her. She could not have understood the whole question, for she hardly understood words at all at the time; but she must have made out “come,” and, putting it with “aunty,” which she had known for weeks, got at my meaning. On the day she was eight months old, at last, the baby half sprawled, half crept, forward to get something. The early, aimless stages of locomotion were over, and she was about to start in in good earnest to learn to creep and to stand. XI CREEPING AND STANDING Now, at eight months old, began a fortnight of rapid development in movements, all branching out from the position on hands and knees which the baby often took as she sprawled on the floor. First she hit on two ways of sitting up, beginning on hands and knees. One of them, in fact, had appeared in the last days of the preceding month. She would tilt over sidewise till she was half sitting, leaning on one hand, then straighten up, raising the hand--and there you are, sitting. The other way, a few days later, was to begin as before on hands and knees, separate the knees, and lift herself over backward till she was sitting, turning the legs out at the knee. No grown person but a contortionist could do it, for our hips have not enough play in the socket to carry the movement through the last inch or two; but babies’ joints are flexible. This became our baby’s regular method, and the position it left her in--legs spread out before her, bent directly out at the knee--was her every-day one for many months. Most babies, I believe, sit monkey fashion--legs straight, with soles turned in.