THE CHILD MIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CHILD MIND.

I Winning entry by H. Doherty. 0.5. E., ■10, Ardinore Iload, Heme liaj.;

I. have no objection to children. 3 Tike them. Provided that they are a distance of, say, half a-mile, I can derive a vast amount of pleasure simply through watching them. But when they're clustered about my feet and one's squalling there, and another's squealing here, and two are fighting just behind me, and six more are egging them on, and dozens are asking me idiotic questions, well, then the old blood boils. Things spin around and I have thoughts of murder and sudden death. But it's Jiot so much ordinary children I dislike; it's these confoundedly interested ones, who ask so many meaningless posers that yet my goat. -As you have already guessed. I have bud plenty of experience with this latter type. Plenty of it. Painful. Sickening. You see. a friend of a friend of a friend of mum's had come to stay for a week at our old homestead. Well, fliat was allright. No objection*. Hut, the appendage she dragged in was the real cause of it all. This appendage, by the way. was her son. He was, also, her '•sun." He answered to some sickening tiame like Dudley Adolphus, but I called him "Goofus." Of course, I had plenty of other names for him, but Peter Pan can't print them. Well, as I started off to say, this article was the absolute out-

side edge when it came to asking silly, poi nt less questions. He was a tramp. A real heavy-toddler. Well, about this time, a circus hove in of, changed course towards, bore down upon, and finally dropped anchor in the town. It wag my duty, painful, repellent, but still, my duty, to tako this Gooi'us to see it. We M.irted off, and 1 must say that he kept tpjift tul we got there. An ominous silence; the lull before the storm. Well we breezed up to the ticket-keeper and thai fv g ° •'"-, U 6eema t0 me > now, W r • P riL ' eles3 arrangement on two ..,, that to be the signal to tl S- * He dul y P'oceeded to put his thought into action. He started up. , *J had .ia do that for*:" Do what fori;" '"Pay." fcasTo! I '^'!»?* t0 W Eve W paying." Cant go anywhere without WMe *• P ie «* of paper he "Tickets." Tor paying, of course." 7 out ■" *SK.TasMa a j°* « *• uons." * asK *° niany ques-Or-S'-J** L ° ok ' *» *■* «P, see,

"Ma-a-a-a-a. Ma-a-a-a-a-» -a-n." "Righto. Itfgbto. Kigbto. Vum v, in. boy. Hero, take this si-qieuee. <~0, yhuke yourself. Feed the liou*. an.l fall in while you're about it. Do something intelligent " ° "Ma-a-a-a-a-a. iia-a-a-a-a-a-a.' - "Kighto! Here y : are. Take it." Need I add that if I had had an axe I would have let him have that as well? For the next three hours, I wandered on through a maze of questions. Life became a giddy blur. My brain reeled, but through it all I was conscious of | the shrill, interrogating treble of this | "child's" voice. At last, we landed up j against the Ferris wheel. The boy ! wonder, now in line fighting form, attacked violently. "What makes the wheel go round?" -Eh?" "What makes the big wheel »o round!" ° I '•Why—er— the little wheel, of course." j "And what makes the little wheel eoround?" & ; "Oh: A dynamo drives it.'' "What makes a dynamo go round." '"Oh! A man laughs at it, sec? Come on, I'm going home. One word from J \o;t and off comes your head:" He ! knew I meant it. • • • • I had tf> see him off at tho station. As the train eteamed away, I heard him: "What makes the wheels go round ? Eh, mum!" And his mother replied, "Oh, Dudley darling!" Dudley, darling !!! I