LITTLE MISS SOMEBODY.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16750, 17 March 1926, Page 5

LITTLE MISS SOMEBODY.

THE MODERN TEN-YEAR-OLD. "How many lirkrts am you going In take for our school concert. Auntie? It's quite good. I'm sure you'll enjoy it." Thus my young niece's invitation — very different from the halting request I remember making to .Term's greataunt, that she should take tickets for a similar function; hut then the youngster of to-day is a very different proposition from the demure little person of the last generation. Modern ten-years-old does not believe that "silence Is golden," and she has only contempt for the pertinent, axiom that "little girls should he seen and not heard." She is a shrewd, self-reliant young person, fully aware of her own importance, and with little of the deference for her ciders so assiduously inculcated in the previous generation. Said one critic with memories of her own youth uppermost. "When I was a little girl 1 never did ," but she reckoned without the modern child's freedom of repartee. "Don't you think," said the. child in her clear, high trebte, "don't you think things have altered an awful lot since then?" It, was evident from the pitying look which accompanied the remark that she considered the speaker rapidly approaching her second childhood.

But if she is self-assertive with those who seem out of sympathy, ten-years-old can be. very lovable towards those she admits to her friendship. Treat her as an equal, and she will treat you with a truly Haltering warmth of affection.

She has an uncanny genius for discovering the "Peter Pan" spirit in her elders, and once, she has made the discovery, for disregarding the years that lie between.

"Isn't it nice? Just us two girls together," remarked one youngster to her companion, fully twenty years her senior, whom she had adopted as a "pal." Tactful little ten-year-old I