Chapter 12

The Pleasantest Club in London

All perambulators lead to the Kensington Gardens.

Not, however, that you will see David in his perambulator much
longer, for 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 me of spoiling him.

Of not thinking of his future.

Of never asking