THE YOUNG IDEA

Southland Times, Issue 19294, 12 July 1924, Page 9

THE YOUNG IDEA

A LITTLE GIRL CONFESSES.

(By

“Dulcy.”)

I like cream. Every day our milkman comes to the back door and gives a cheery “Hullo!” He doesn’t say “Milk-on” with a funny little break on the “oh,” as mother has told me milkmen did when she was a girl; but times have changed and milkmen change with them, I suppose. Anyway. I think the new idea is more friendly, if it is less musical. He is a nice milkman: cheery and always merry. I hear him whistling as he slams through the front gate, his hob-nailed boots clanging and clattering on the asphalt path, and then round the sides of the house he takes his way, until he reaches the back door. There he places his heavy can on the step and gives his cheering call: “Hullo!’ Jenny, our maid—she has been with us so very many years that I sometimes think she could never have been a little girl, or a maid in any other house but ours—is always late with the milk jug. She scours it \M>th boiling hot water, and leaves it standing upside down near the window, because “Them bactery get into the jug offen the towel” if the jug is dried in the usual way. Then Jenny goes off doing other things, and when the milkman arrives she has to dash through the house with her hair and apron flying, to get the clean jug. One morning in her hurry she picked up the wrong jug—it was full of stock—and wasn’t there a mess all over - the pantry? The milkman laughed—l could hear him laughing all the way out of our place afterwards—and Jenny did not speak to him for many, many weeks. I always wait to hear Jenny rush, because I know it is not safe to stand in the passage until she has reached the backdoor safely. Then she holds out fhe jug and I come forward. The milkman always knows me and talks to me. He is a nice man. He says he likes girls with red hair. Mine isn’t really red—it’s auburn; but he likes to call it red, so why should I spoil his pleasures. He always asks me if I have been a good girl and rather than disappoint him I always say I have. One day mother was nearby and she contradicted me, which I think was very rude because he Is my friend and not hers, but I said nothing. Mother told him I was not a good girl, and he was so hurt about it that I made up my mind there and then that I would be good ever after—or if I wasn’t good I’d tell him I was. That is not telling stories. Mother, when she goes out to afternoon tea with her friends, tells people she has enjoyed herself when I know she has been miserable, but they are not stories, they are politeness. So, w 7 hen I tell my milkman that I am good when I am not quite certain that I have been good, that is politeness, too; and I don’t think that will be marked in the Black Books against my name. If it is I don’t care, because he is a nice milkman. Every day after he has filled the jug for Jenny he goes away, clacketting over the footpath, and I leave a little jug of my own near the front door. He steals back and he puts some cream in it, without saying a word. That is our secret. He makes out I do not know, and I stand behind the door without a sound while he puts the cream in the little jug. Then as soon as he has gone I get my little jug, so that the cats will not take any of it. So you see he is a ve-r-ry nice milkman and I would not like to hurt his feelings. The morning that mother interrupted me and said I was not good, he was so hurt that he went right away and I suppose he had a good cry over it. He was so put out about it that he did not leave me any cream, and so I resolved never to disappoint him again. I think I was right to do this, because it is right for us to make those around us happy. I am sure that even if we imperil our own souls we must be kind to others. Charity begins at home, I was told, and I am beginning at home with my charity. Anyway, he is such a nice milkman. And I am so fond of cream!