e as other children; it must all be in their systems and can't get
out for some reason or other. And a child brought up on chicken and
rice-pudding must be different to a child that eats Spickgans and liver
sausages. And they are different; I can't tell in what way, but
they certainly are; and I think if I steadily describe them from the
materials I have collected the last three days, I may perhaps hit on the
points of difference."

"Why bother about points of difference?" asked Irais. "I should write
some little thing, bringing in the usual parts of the picture, such as
knees and toes, and make it mildly pathetic."

"But it is by no means an easy thing for me to do," said Minora
plaintively; "I have so little experience of children."

"Then why write it at all?" asked that sensible person Elizabeth.

"I have as little experience as you," said Irais, "because I have no
children; but if you don't yearn after startling originality, nothing is
easier than to write bits about them. I believe I could do a dozen in an
hour."

She sat down at the writing-table, took up an old letter, and scribbled
for about five minutes. "There," she said, throwing it to Minora, "you
may have it--pink toes and all complete."

Minora put on her eye-glasses and read aloud:

"When my baby shuts her eyes and sings her hymns at bed-time my stale
and battered soul is filled with awe. All sorts of vague memories crowd
into my mind--memories of my own mother and myself--how many years
ago!--of the sweet helplessness of being gathered up half asleep in her
arms, and undressed, and put in my cot, without being wakened; of the
angels I believed in; of little children coming straight from heaven,
and still being surrounded, so long as they were good, by the shadow of
white wings,--all the dear poetic nonsense learned, just as my baby is
learning it, at her mother's knee. She has not an idea of the beauty
of the charming things she is told, and stares wide-eyed, with heavenly
eyes, while her mother talks of the heaven she has so lately come from,
and is relieved and comforted by the interrupting bread and milk. At two
years old she does not understand angels, and does understand bread and
milk; at five she has vague notions about them, and prefers bread and
milk; at ten both bread and milk and angels have been left behind in
the nursery, and she has already found out that they are luxuries not
necessary to her everyday life. In later years she may b