In France, where it is the fashion for mother and _bonne_ to be together both out of doors and at home, at least the children are not neglected nor ill-treated, as is too often the case with us; and if they are improperly managed, according to our ideas, the fault is in the system, not in the want of maternal supervision. Here it is a very rare case indeed when the mother accompanies the nurse and children; and those days when she does are nursery gala-days to be talked of and remembered for weeks after. As the little ones grow older, she may occasionally take them with her when she visits her more intimate friends; but this is for her own pleasure, not their good; and going with them to see that they are properly cared for has nothing to do with the matter. It is to be supposed that each mother has a profound belief in her own nurse, and that when she condemns the neglect and harshness shown to other children by the servants in charge, she makes a mental reservation in favour of her own, and is very sure that nothing improper nor cruel takes place in _her_ nursery. Her children do not complain; and she always tells them to come to her when anything is amiss. On which negative evidence she satisfies her soul, and makes sure that all is right because she is too neglectful to see if anything is wrong. She does not remember that her children do not complain because they dare not. Dear and beautiful as all mammas are to the small fry in the nursery, they are always in a certain sense Junos sitting on the top of Mount Olympus, making occasional gracious and benign descents, but practically too far removed for useful interference; while nurse is an ever-present power, capable of sly pinches and secret raids, as well as of more open oppression--a power, therefore, to be propitiated, if only with the grim subservience of a Yezidi too much afraid of the Evil One to oppose him. Wherefore nurse is propitiated, failing the protection of the glorified creature just gone to her grand dinner in a cloud of lace and a blaze of jewels; and the first lesson taught the youthful Christian in short frocks or knickerbockers is not to carry tales down stairs, and by no means to let mamma know what nurse desires should be kept secret.