When the baby is baptized, the godfather gives a pair
of gloves to the mother and the godmother. Curiously enough, most
Belgian parents would rather have a baby girl than a boy, because a
boy costs more to educate, and also because boys, when they grow up,
have to draw lots for service in the army, and almost every father who
can afford it buys his son off, and that costs money.
There is no nursery life such as we have in England--at least, in very
few Belgian families. Here again money is grudged. People who will
pay high wages for a good cook hire young girls of fourteen or fifteen
to look after their children, and these _bonnes_, as they are called,
are paid very little, and are often careless and stupid. The result is
that the children are constantly with their parents, and, to keep them
quiet, are dreadfully spoilt and petted. It very often happens that,
when a Belgian lady has a friend calling on her, young children, who
ought to be in a nursery, are playing in the drawing-room. Their
mother has no control over them, and if she ventures to tell them to
keep quiet, or to run away, they don't obey her, and then she gives
in, and lets them have their own way.
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