“I always believe my Aunt Woggles,” said Betty with infinite scorn.  “Was it nice, Aunt Woggles?” Mercifully she didn’t wait for an answer, but continued:  " I lost the currant three times, but I found it all right.  I thought I had trodden on it, but I hadn’t, because I looked on the bottom of my shoe and it wasn’t there.  I did have lots of currants, only when I dropped them Mungo ate them all up, except this one.  He didn’t eat this one because I stopped him.  I said, ‘Drop it, Mungo!’ and he did.  It was a good thing he didn’t eat it, wasn’t it?  I made lines across, did you see ?  All across the cake!  I made those with a hairpin.  It was a good plan, wasn’t it? "

Somehow or other my breakfast had fallen short of my expectations.  But what I had lost in appetite I had perhaps gained in other ways, for I had until then undoubtedly existed in the mind of Mr. Dudley only under the shadow of Diana’s charming personality.  I now took my stand alone, as the Aunt Woggles who ate mud-pies, I am afraid; but still it is something to have a separate existence.  Is it?

Chapter V

Diana’s children are of a distinctly religious turn of mind.  I think most children are, and what wonderful, curious thing their religion is!  Looking back to my own childhood, I remember thinking, or rather knowing, that the Holy Ghost was a Shetland shawl.  We called our shawls “comforters”; we wore them when we went to parties in the winter.  I will not leave you comfortless,” could mean nothing else.  To complete the illusion, we had in the nursery a picture of the Pentecost, the Holy Ghost descending in the form of a cloudy substance, not unlike a Shetland shawl.  I was so sure that I was right, that I never thought of asking any one.  When I grew older and told my mother, she said, “But why didn’t you ask me, darling?” forgetting that when a child knows a thing it never asks; when in doubt it will ask, but not when it knows.  It is a difficult and dangerous thing to shake a child’s belief, and a pity, too.  For if we could all believe as simply as a child does, how different it would make life!  If Diana has a fault, it is that she takes her children too seriously.  She thinks it is wrong to tell them, “Children should be seen and not heard,” simply because they have asked a question she can’t answer.  Aunts have been known to do it as a last resource, on occasions of great danger.

Hugh wants to know if God put in the quack before he made the duck.  It is difficult, isn’t it, to answer that sort of question?

On another occasion he asked Betty if God was alive.  Betty, eager to instruct, said, “My dear Hugh, God is a Spirit.”

“Then we can boil our milk on him.”  That was a poser for Betty.

Diana was at a loss, too, when Hugh announced his intention of going to Heaven.  She asked him what he would do when he got there.  I thought the question a little unwise at the time.  “Oh! " said Hugh, “stroll round with Jesus, I suppose, and have a shot at the rabbits.”