The really successful aunt knows the particular taste of each nephew and niece.  She knows, moreover, the exact moment at which the taste changes from a love for woolly rabbits to a passion for steam engines.  Instinct tells her at what age a child maybe promoted, with safety, from wool to paint, and she knows the critical moment in a boy’s life when a Bible should be bestowed.  It usually, or perhaps I should say my experience is that it usually, follows the first knife, an ordinary two-bladed knife, and comes the birthday before a knife —­ with things in it.”  The real boy must have a knife with things in it:  a corkscrew,—­ I wonder why a corkscrew? —­ a buttonhook, a thing to take stones out of horses’ hoofs, a thing to mend traces with —­ I know I am ignorant of the technical terms —­ but the hardest-hearted shop-assistant will never fail to help a professional aunt in the choice of a knife, unless by chance he should be unhappy enough never to have been a boy, and such cases are rare.

I used often to wonder why boys wanted all these things.  Now I know, bemuse I asked Dick and he said, You see, Aunt Woggles, I use them for other things.”  I am not sure that most of us don’t do the same thing with many of our most cherished possessions in life.

As regards steam-engines Zerlina lays down a distinct law.  They must never burst-that is an injury no sister-in-law would ever forgive — and paint must never come off.  If Zerlina had known and loved the taste of crimson lake in the days of her youth, she would never draw so hard and fast a line.

From the earliest moment in a baby’s career, the professional aunt takes upon herself serious responsibilities.  She may not, for instance, like any ordinary aunt, pass the baby in his perambulator, out walking.  Any other aunt may, with perfect propriety, say, “Hullo, duckie, where’s auntie?” and pass on.  She knows the danger of stopping, and seeks to avoid it.  Not so the professional aunt.  She realizes the danger and faces it.  She knows she will have to wait, for the sake of the child’s character, until he shall choose to say, “Ta-ta.”

He will probably, if he is a healthy child, say everything he knows but that.  He will go through his limited vocabulary in a pathetically obliging manner, making the most beautiful “moo-moos " and “quack-quacks,” but he will not say, “Ta-ta.”  Why should he?  On persuasion, and more especially if the interview should take place at a street-corner on a windy March day, he will repeat the “moo-moos” and “quack-quacks” even more successfully than before, and he will wonder in what way they fall short of perfection, since he earns no praise.  He likes to be rewarded with, “Kevver boy.”  We all do, just as a matter of form, if nothing else.  Surely ordinary politeness demands it.

He will not say, “Ta-ta,” though.  Who knows but what it is innate politeness on his part and his way of saying, “Oh, don’t go!  What a flying visit!”