ets out to expose popular fallacies or to confound
time-honoured legends is bound to make enemies.

The latest legend I have been privileged to explore is not the product
of superstition and slow time, but a deliberately manufactured growth
of comparatively recent origin. It is concerned with Barbara, not the
impersonal lady who figures in the old logic-book doggerel, but an
extremely live and highly illogical person to whom for half a decade I
have had the honour to be father. It is also concerned with Barbara's
Aunt Julia and, in a lesser degree, with Barbara's mother.

From the time (just over three years ago) when Barbara first attempted
articulate speech I have been bombarded with reports of the wonderful
things my daughter has said. In the earlier years these diverting
stories, for which Julia was nearly always cited as authority, reached
me through the medium of the Field Post-Office, and, being still
fairly new to fatherhood, I used proudly to retail them in Mess, until
an addition was made to the rule relating to offences punishable by a
round of drinks.

On my brief visits home I would wait expectantly for the brilliant
flashes of humour or of uncanny intelligence to issue from Barbara's
lips, and her failure during these periods to sustain her reputation
I was content to explain on the assumption that I came within the
category of casual visitors. But I have now lived in my own home for
over a year, and Barbara and I have become very well acquainted. She
talks to me without restraint, and at times most engagingly, but
seldom, if ever, does she give utterance in my hearing to a _jeu
d'esprit_ that I feel called upon to repeat to others. Nevertheless
until a few days ago I was still constantly being informed--chiefly
by Barbara's aunt and less frequently by her mother--of the "killing"
things that child had been saying. I grew privately sceptical, but had
no proof, and it was only by accident that I was at last enabled to
prick the bubble.

Julia (who besides being Barbara's aunt is Suzanne's sister) had come
to tea and was chatting in the drawing-room with Suzanne (who besides
being Julia's sister is Barbara's mother and my wife) and Barbara
(whose relationship all round has been sufficiently indicated).
The drawing-room door was open, and so was that of my study on the
opposite side of the passage, where I was coquetting with a trifle
of work. The conversation, which I could not help overhearing, was
con