r soon after I first shook his faith in his mother, it came to him to
be up and doing, and he up and did in the Broad Walk itself, where he
would stand alone most elaborately poised, signing imperiously to the
British public to time him, and looking his most heavenly just before he
fell. He fell with a dump, and as they always laughed then, he pretended
that this was his funny way of finishing.

That was on a Monday. On Tuesday he climbed the stone stair of the
Gold King, looking over his shoulder gloriously at each step, and
on Wednesday he struck three and went into knickerbockers. For the
Kensington Gardens, you must know, are full of short cuts, familiar to
all who play there; and the shortest leads from the baby in long
clothes to the little boy of three riding on the fence. It is called the
Mother's Tragedy.

If you are a burgess of the gardens (which have a vocabulary of their
own), the faces of these quaint mothers are a clock to you, in which you
may read the ages of their young. When he is three they are said to wear
the knickerbocker face, and you may take it from me that Mary assumed
that face with a sigh; fain would she have kept her boy a baby longer,
but he insisted on his rights, and I encouraged him that I might notch
another point against her. I was now seeing David once at least every
week, his mother, who remained culpably obtuse to my sinister design,
having instructed Irene that I was to be allowed to share him with her,
and we had become close friends, though the little nurse was ever a
threatening shadow in the background. Irene, in short, did not improve
with acquaintance. I found her to be high and mighty, chiefly, I think,
because she now wore a nurse's cap with streamers, of which the little
creature was ludicrously proud. She assumed the airs of an official
person, and always talked as if generations of babies had passed through
her hands. She was also extremely jealous, and had a way of signifying
disapproval of my methods that led to many coldnesses and even
bickerings between us, which I now see to have been undignified. I
brought the following accusations against her:

That she prated too much about right and wrong.

That she was a martinet.

That she pretended it was a real cap, with real streamers, when she knew
Mary had made the whole thing out of a muslin blind. I regret having
used this argument, but it was the only one that really damped her.

On the other hand, she accused m