AMUSING CHILDREN I HAVE MET. 
59 
pier on which the children played. 1 have 
sketched bits of this wooden pier hundreds 
of times. Sometimes it is only a vague line 
or two, but to me it is always the little pier 
T once played on at Margate. Just occa- 
sionally 1 put my figures at Brighton or 
Harwich. I only went to the latter place 
for a day, but it rather appealed to me. 
One pleasing feature of my work is the 
number of letters which I receive from people 
and children with whom I have not the 
slightest acquaintance. Very often I get 
letters from mothers saying that they have 
dressed their little one like a Hilda Cowham 
girt. 
But a constant source of delight to me are 
the quaint and amusing sayings _ which I 
overhear at times in my associations with 
children and the funny little pranks they get 
up to. I was once at a house, for instance, 
where everybody smoked, and the small 
child (about two), feeling rather out of it, I 
suppose, took a handful of cigarettes from the 
box and went into the hall. A few. minutes 
afterwards I went out and found him there, 
sitting in the middle of the floor, puffing away 
at an unlighted cigarette, with all. the tiger- 
skin rugs round him, each with a cigarette in 
its mouth, or — -if it was one of the pressed- 
flat type — the cigarettes were put into its 
ears, one in each ear. 
The ingenuity of the 
small child is simply 
astonishing, an d 
although at times it is 
apt to lead him into 
wrongdoing and specious 
excuses, one cannot help 
laughing at the manner 
in which he attains his 
desire and avoids rank 
disobedience. Once a 
friend of mine took 
Billy, his little son, 
round his garden — quite 
a small one — where the 
apple trees were those 
trained along to make a 
fence, and consequently 
the fruit grew very low 
down. Pointing to them, 
be said to Billy, “ Now, you mustn’t pick any 
of those apples. Do you hear ? You’re not 
to pick them.” “ Yes, daddy, I won't.” But 
after about a week he went round his garden 
again, and sticking out from the trees were 
some cores. The child had taken him quite 
literally. He had not picked them ! 
Equally ingenious is a little niece of mine 
who has an imaginary husband, . who at 
times is i£ a great weight on her mind,” she 
says, and sometimes , but not often, k< comes 
in useful.” Her mother gave her a chocolate 
one day, and after a pause gave her one for 
her husband also. The little girl ate hers, and 
then, saying her husband was sitting on the 
stairs as he was shy, lock his out to him. 
Presently she returned. Her mother said, 
“ How did husband like his sweet ? ” “ Oh,” 
said Joan, “ he said he felt sick and couldn’t 
eat it, so 1 could have it.” 
On another occasion 1 asked a small child 
to stay with me for the day. She arrived 
early in the morning, and seemed to be enjoy 
ing herself very much, but in the afternoon I 
found her upstairs in tears. 1 said, “ What s 
the matter ? ” “ Oh, T don’t know, but I 
feel as though I lived here now ! ” Not very 
complimentary, certainly, but the feelings 
which prompted the remark will be readily 
understood when it is explained that the 
child was exceptionally fond of her mother, 
and was seldom separated from her. 
My own small boy has been a source of 
amusement to me at times. During his first 
term at school he told me one day that he was 
humming in class. The master turned round 
and said, sarcastically, “ Go on humming , 
we like it.” “ And 1 did, mother,” he re- 
marked, naively, “ and 
he came and turned me 
out. Why did he do 
that ? ” 
He was talking to his 
cousin one day, who is 
much smaller than he 
is, about their respective 
schools. My son said, 
“ You’re only a baby. 
You go to a baby’s 
school, where you’re 
taught by a lady. Em 
taught by ‘a man.” 
“Oh,” said his cousin, 
indignantly, “ if 1 do go 
to a baby’s school and 
am taught by a lady, 
she’s got short hair, 
anyway ! ” Which, I 
suppose, made up 
for the deficiency of sex. 
Another amusing encounter between these 
two was brought about through my nursing 
a baby, not by any means a beauty. My son 
and nephew were discussing the usual ques- 
tion of where babies come from. Dick, the 
nephew, said, “ It’s come from heaven. 
Mother told me so.” My son, who is eight, 
