I made her acquaintance through the correspondence columns of the "Baby's Journal".  As I devoured it week by week, it gradually dawned on me that some names appeared far too frequently, and I began to watch out for Pip Squeak, whose name always stood at the head of some statement that brooked no argument. "Marigold should certainly get rid of her nurse," she asserted in January," she does not understand the psychology of a child " and proceeded to state the characteristics of a good nurse, which made me, an ordinary mother, blush guiltily. Was I always tactful and patient, did I always refrain from saying ‘don't’ and  had I a good influence over my young urchins? Perhaps that put my back up, for I began to watch and collect data about Pip Squeak, an easy matter as each letter revealed a little more of her private affairs. 

She had, I discovered in March, two children, a nurse and a maid, and her household ran smoothly, with no grousing, because the set wok was apportioned in the . manner she described. I began to suspect that she had never been through the - real mill of motherhood, and when I found that her children were girls and nicely spaced, I felt my guess confirmed. Would everything have run so smoothly, if she had had two bad boys, a year apart, and a young daily girl as sole assistant? 

Perhaps I was unjust to her, and I know that envy played a large part in my dislike of this unknown woman, for- She spoke airily in April of holidays in France "so comfortable and inexpensive", and recommended highly the little hotel at which she, accompanied by maid, had stayed with the children. Our budget - having proved to us that any holiday was out of the question, I conceived a grudge against one who so took them for granted. 

Matters approached a head when in May she stated definitely "what ‘Peter' obviously needs is a change of air. Why not a month, say, in sunny Portugal?” Why not, indeed, and blow the expenses. Seething with annoyance, I resolve to join issue with her as soon as she gave me an opening, and a fortnight later, it came. In reply to a business mother who worried because her growing babe would no longer sheep happily in his pram while she was workings she replied, dogmatically "The baby will learn to play by himself, and should sleep most of the morning until three years old." Then I knew that with her two well trained  children and her competent nurse, Pip Squeak had never touched the fringe of real hard motherhood. She had not the slightest conception of the life of some of us who can have a baby howling in his pram in the front garden and another calling “Mummy from the back, can run from one to the other, answer the backdoor, clean up the house, and have bottles and meals ready at the right time in spite of it all. With one joyous cry  I challenged Pip Squeak to mortal combat. 

“Peter's MUmmy, I-wrote, should take with a pinch of salt Pip Squeak's optimistic assertion that the child should sleep most of the morning. He might or he might not. Babies are individuals, and have little use for rules. 

I waited happily for Pip Squeak to take up the gauntlet.