A Gallery of Children/Chapter 4

by Alan Alexander Milne

MISS WATERLOW IN BED

This is Miss Waterlow in bed.

Mrs. Waterlow is kissing her goodnight, and saying:

"God bless you and keep you, my darling darlingest, my sweetheart, my little baby one."

Miss Waterlow gives a little far-away smile. She is thinking:

"I know a funny thing to think when I'm alone."

Mrs. Waterlow is looking at her as if she could never stop looking, and saying:

"Thank you, and thank you, God, for giving me my darling darlingest. You do understand, don't you, that it doesn't matter what happens to me, but oh! don't let anything terrible happen to her!"

Miss Waterlow is thinking:

"I shall pretend I'm big as the moon, and nobody can catch me I'm so big. Isn't that funny?"

"Good-night, beloved. Sleep well, my darling darlingest."

Miss Waterlow is remembering something . . . something very beautiful . . . but it all happened so long ago that she has forgotten the beginning of it before she remembers the end.

"Oh, my lovely, when you look like that you make me want to cry. What are you thinking of, darlingest?"

Miss Waterlow won't tell.

Yet perhaps for a moment Mrs. Waterlow has been there, too.

"God bless you, my lovely," she says, and puts out the light.

Miss Waterlow is alone. **** Miss Waterlow at this time was one. It is a tremendous age to be, and often she would lie on her back and laugh to think of all the babies who were None. When she was six months old, Mr. Waterlow, who was a poet, wrote some verses about her and he slipped them proudly into Mrs. Waterlow's hand one evening. Owing to a misunderstanding, they were used to wedge the nursery window, which rattled at night; and though they wedged very delightfully for some time, Mr. Waterlow couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Mrs. Waterlow was, of course, as sorry as she could be when she understood what had happened, but it was then too late. As Mr. Waterlow said: Once you have bent a piece of poetry, it is never quite the same again. Fortunately for all of us, two lines at the end, torn off so as to make the wedge the right thickness, have survived. They go like this:

"She never walks, and she never speaks—
And we've had her for weeks and weeks and weeks!"

Now the truth was that Miss Waterlow could speak if she wanted to, but she had decided to wait until she was quarter-past-one. The reason was that she had such lovely things to remember, if only she could remember them. You can't talk and think. For a year and a quarter she would just lie on her back and remember . . . and then when she had it all quite clear in her mind, she would tell them all about it. But nobody can speak without practice. So every night, as soon as she was alone, she practised.

She practised now.

"Teddy!" she called.

Down on the floor, at the foot of her bed, Teddy-bear, whose head was nodding on his chest, woke up with a start.

"What is it?" he grumbled.

"Are you asleep, Teddy?"

"I are and I aren't," said Teddy.

"I forght I were, and I weren't," said Miss Waterlow.

"Well, well, what is it?"

"What's a word for a lovely—a lovely—you know what I mean—and all of a sudden —only you don't because—what is the word, Teddy?"

"Condensedmilk," said Teddy.

"I don't fink it is," said Miss Waterlow.

"As near as you can get nowadays."

Miss Waterlow sighed. She never seemed to get very near.

"Perhaps I shall never tell them," said Miss Waterlow sadly "Perhaps they don't have the word."

"Perhaps they don't," said Teddy. "It's a funny thing about them," he went on, waking up slightly, "what a few words they have got. Take 'condensedmilk' as an example. It does, but it isn't really, if you see what I mean. That's why I never talk to 'em now. They don't get any richness into their words—they don't get any what I call flavour. There's no bite."

"I want a word—"

"Better go to sleep," said Teddy, his head nodding suddenly again.

"Shan't I ever be able to tell them?" asked Miss Waterlow wistfully.

"Never," said Teddy sleepily. "They've got the wrong words."

Miss Waterlow lay there, wrapt in drowsy and enchanted memories of that golden land to which she could never quite return. She would tell them all about it some day . . . but not now . . . not now . . . not now . . .

She gave a little sigh, and was asleep.