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The April Baby's Book of Tunes
[Illustration: The MM Co.]
[Illustration: _'Watched them go off with their Skates'_]
The
April Baby's Book of Tunes
WITH
THE STORY OF HOW THEY CAME TO BE WRITTEN
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN"
_ILLUSTRATED BY KATE GREENAWAY_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1900
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
_Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
'Watched them go off with their skates' _Frontispiece_
'Don't push so, you awful June' _To face page_ 7
Little Polly Flinders 15
'But Flinders' _foots_ was cold' 17
The Strains of 'Polly Flinders' 25
Mary, Mary, quite contrary 30
Little Miss Muffet 34
Hush-a-bye, Baby 44
The Tea Party 50
Jack and Jill 54
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat 56
Curly Locks 60
Sing a Song of Sixpence 63
Where are you going to, my Pretty Maid? 66
'Nobody asked you, Sir,' she said 71
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild 74
The April Baby's Book of Tunes
with
The Story of how they came to be Written
Once upon a time there were three little girls called April, May, and
June. Their mother thought it simpler to call them after the months
they were born in, instead of having to worry over a choice between
Jane, or Susan, or Mary, or any of the ordinary girl-names. She had
meant to call the eldest one Jane, because it was such a short, tidy
little name; but an aunt who was staying with her nearly cried, the
bare idea made her so unhappy. You see, the aunt was very fond of
Shakespeare, and wanted the baby to be called Ophelia, and there is a
great difference between the sound of Ophelia and the sound of Jane;
but the mother didn't want to have a baby called Ophelia, and didn't
want to argue either, so she settled it by having it christened after
the month it was born in, and everybody said how queer.
Once she had begun doing that, of course she had to go on; but
luckily the stork didn't bring any more babies after the June one,
or I don't know what would have happened. How could you call a baby
February, for instance? These babies lived in Germany, and that
is why the stork brought them. In England you are dug up out of a
parsley-bed, but in Germany you are brought by a stork, who flies
through the air holding you in his beak, and you wriggle all the time
like a little pink worm, and then he taps at the window of the house
you are bound for, and puts you solemnly into the nice warm cushion
that is sure to be ready for you, and you are rolled round and round
in flannel things, and tied comfortably on to the cushion, and left
to get your breath and collect your wits after the quick journey
across the sky. That is exactly what happened to April, and May, and
June. They often told their mother about it, and said they could
remember it quite well.
They were about five, and six, and seven years old in the winter week
I am going to tell you about. It was the week before Easter, when it
oughtn't to have been winter at all; but strange things happen in the
way of weather in those far-away forests where they live, and after
having been quite like spring for a long while, it turned suddenly
very cold.
At first when it began to snow they were delighted, and got out their
sleigh and their snow-boots, and harnessed their mother's big dog
to the sleigh, and drove him up and down the paths, only laughing
all the louder when he ran them against a tree and pitched them off
into the snow. But the next day the snow was so deep that it covered
the sleigh right up, and came over their knees, and got inside their
stockings at the top, and made them very uncomfortable; so they
stayed indoors, and finished the presents they were making for their
mother's Easter surprise.
German Easters are very nice things, something like Christmas, only
instead of tables covered with presents round the Christmas tree,
the presents are hidden out in the garden, in the grass or among the
bushes that are generally just turning a faint green. Everybody
gives everybody else presents; and then there are eggs of all sorts
and sizes, some in sugar with chocolate things inside, and some in
chocolate with sugar things inside, and some in china with presents
inside, and a great many real eggs, hard-boiled, and dyed in colours
that would astonish the hens who laid them, and you eat more of them
than is good for you and afterwards are sorry.
April, May, and June knitted mittens for their mother. At Christmas
they knitted mittens, and at Easter they knitted mittens, and for her
birthday they knitted mittens; so that there was never any need for
her to bother about buying mittens. They could all knit very nicely,
and their mother used to say a little while before any of these
festivals that she hoped Father Christmas, or the Easter hare, or the
birthday sprite meant to bring her some mittens that time, for she
loved them better than anything else. Then the babies were delighted,
because knitting was easy, and it was so convenient that their mother
should happen to like just what they liked best to make.
But in two days they had finished the mittens, and still it went on
snowing.
Then they had to fall back upon their dolls, for it was snowing as
though it never meant to stop. Never had been seen such an Easter.
People went about saying, 'Did you ever?' to the people they met, and
couldn't get over it at all. The window panes were sheets of ice, for
there were I don't know how many degrees of frost, and each night it
froze harder than it had done the night before. In the daytime the
rooms were full of a wonderful white light from the snow outside,
and the fires blazed extra cheerfully, and it was very cosy indoors
in their mother's pretty rooms, where flowers blossomed all the year
round, no matter what was going on outside, and where it always smelt
of violets.
For two days, then, the babies played contentedly enough with their
dolls. But dolls are but mortal, and how can you expect a doll you
have had given you at Christmas to be anything but mangled by Easter?
What they were playing with could hardly be called dolls at all, for
although there was a great abundance of arms, and legs, and heads,
and dresses, and wigs, and eyes, there was not one single complete
doll in all the heap. June went about rattling half a dozen eyes
in her pocket as grown-up people rattle their money; and when her
mother asked her what made that noise, she pulled out a handful of
them in different sizes, and they looked so like real eyes that it
quite gave her mother what is known as a turn,--which is a sort of
feeling as though you were being suddenly pulled inside out and back
again very quickly.
In two more days they had got to the stage in doll-playing in which
you begin to chop up parts of the bodies and boil them, and warm bits
of the wax and mould it into puddings, and make reckless porridge out
of the bran stuffing and the water your face was washed in before
dinner,--the stage, that is, which comes last of all, and just before
you are put in the corner.
And still it went on snowing.
Their mother, who had been placidly reading all this time, began to
be uneasy when she saw with what ardour the cooking in the next room
was being carried on. The playroom opened into the library, where she
sat this cold weather like Polly Flinders, warming her toes; and she
got up every now and then and peeped in, stealing away again softly,
half inclined to laugh, and yet disturbed by visions of corners in
the near future as she saw the three chopping, and pounding, and
stirring, with scarlet cheeks and dishevelled hair and mouths shut
tight, and an oddly vindictive look on their faces, as though there
was more than mere cooking in what they were doing,--the look almost
of those who are paying off old scores at last, and can't do it too
thoroughly. And if you want to know what vindictive means, you look
at your nurse's face next time she takes you behind a tree in the
Park to shake you in comfort, without the least provocation, and when
you know you have been an angel.
In another hour all their stock of remains had been used up, and
they had had a banquet, which they cut rather short, however, on
realising the dulness of only pretending to eat; and then, instead
of tidying everything up, and washing the saucepans and plates like
good children, they leant disconsolately against the window-sills,
staring out into the white world outside through little holes they
had scratched in the frost on the panes, and flattened their noses,
and felt cross.
'Don't push so, you awful June,' said April, giving June an impatient
shove. They often talked English together, though they were German
babies, and if it was not quite like the English that little girls in
England talk, neither was it, I am sure, any worse than the German
would be that English children of the same age might try to talk.
[Illustration: '_Don't push so, you awful June_']
'I doesn't push,' said June blandly: and pushed with all her might.
June was a short, thick baby, and couldn't reach up to the windows
as comfortably as the other two; and besides, April had scratched
lovely big eye-holes with her nails in the ice on the pane, and June
coveted them. Do you know what covet means? It is a dreadful feeling
that seizes people when they see somebody else with the things they
would like and haven't got, and makes them feel as though they were
going to burst. June was sure she would burst if she didn't soon get
April's holes, so she pushed and wriggled with all her strength, and
when April protested, merely repeated reassuringly 'I doesn't push.'
But April was not to be put off like that, and finding that her legs
were being violently dragged away from beneath her, swooped down on
June, who would not let her go, and they both rolled over on the
floor together, while May sat on her window-sill kicking her heels in
great delight, and egged them on with cheers.
Then Séraphine, their French nurse, came in, and threw up her hands
aghast at what she saw,--the room all littered with bran and doll's
hair, the table covered with the remains of the feast, the sofa
strewn with saucepans, and the two babies rolling over and over each
other on the floor.
Séraphine had been meek, and soft, and delicate when first she came
to be the babies' nurse, but that had all worn off long ago, and
she had grown robust in the healthy forest air, and round and rosy
on the wholesome country food, and with her roundness and rosiness
had come a determination to have her own way and circumvent the
babies; and they, after lording it over her during those first few
blissful months, had found to their sorrowful surprise that she had
unaccountably grown to be a match for them.
On this occasion also she was a match for them. First she threw
up her hands and shrilly cried _Mon Dieu!_ Then she ordered them
to clear up all the mess they had made; and then, exasperated by
the unwilling slowness of their movements, and still more so by
the conviction that it was she who would ultimately have to do the
clearing up, swept them off, after a moment's impatient watching,
into the three corners of the room, kept carefully clear for such
emergencies. It was a good thing there was not a fourth baby, for
there would have been no corner to put it in, because, though there
was a fourth corner in this, as in most rooms, it was occupied by the
stove. April pointed this out one day to her mother, who agreed that
it was all very conveniently arranged.
Their mother in the next room heard Séraphine's entrance and
exclamation of dismay, and then the sudden stillness which she knew
from experience meant corners. She got up and looked out the window.
It had left off snowing, and the garden was covered up with the
loveliest smooth, thick, white coat, and all the trees looked like
Christmas trees. It made one long, somehow, to run out and make
footmarks everywhere on the spotlessness.
She waited a little while, so as not to interfere with Séraphine's
ideas of justice, and then went into the playroom with an
appropriately grave face, and called them out of their corners,
and gave them a short lecture as mothers have to do when children
are not good. She told them, when she had done, that of all things
in the world she disliked having to lecture, and she would be so
grateful if only they would keep out of corners and save her the
trouble of it; upon which there was a sudden outburst of enthusiasm,
and a confusion of arms and legs, and a great amount of kissing, and
then they made a determined attack on the saucepans and scoured with
such goodwill that in ten minutes everything was tidy again, and
they could pull on their boots and gaiters and go out and help their
mother spoil the beautiful, fascinating snow.
But they sank right in, June up to her ears, May up to her neck, and
April up to her shoulders, and it was quite impossible to move. So
the mother ordered the sleigh, and had them wrapped up to the eyes
in furs, and fur hoods pulled over their foreheads, and took them
sleighing along the wintry roads.
Where these babies lived, when you drive in winter you sit in fur
bags up to your waist, and the rest of you is so covered up that
nothing but your eyes can be seen. If you don't do that you are
frost-bitten, which is a very disagreeable thing to be, and may end
in your nose crumbling away, and your beauty crumbling away with it.
It is no use my telling you how cold the thermometer showed it to be,
for children who live in London and go for walks every day in the
Park or Kensington Gardens needn't bother much about thermometers,
so you wouldn't understand. But where April and her sisters lived,
you look anxiously at the thermometer hanging outside your window
before you go out, so as to know how many furs to put on, or whether
you can venture out at all. Sometimes it is so cold that for days
you are shut up in the house, especially if you happen to be a baby.
The babies' mother very nearly decided to oil them all over, as the
people do who live more or less at the North Pole, so that they
should not feel the cold so much; but then she remembered that babies
are sent into the world chiefly that mothers may have something to
kiss all the time, and how can you kiss oiled babies? She soon found
out in the sleigh that this was one of the days when people who are
not oiled are better at home, and she turned back and sent April and
May in again. June begged so hard to be allowed to stay that she took
her a little further, giving in because June was the fattest, and
fat babies are never so cold as lean ones. That is why, I suppose,
everybody who lives up in those forests where the babies did, are so
fat. They eat and drink a great deal all the summer, so that when the
long, bitter winter comes they may be nicely protected against the
cold, and needn't buy so many furs; and though that sort of figure
may not be pretty at a party, it is very convenient in a frost.
But the mother and June soon had to turn back too, for their
eyelashes froze tight on to the long fur round their faces and they
couldn't open their eyes any more, which made it dreadfully dull. So
they went home again, and had to grope their way in, and thaw their
eyelashes at the fire; and then the mother sat down and wondered what
she could do to help the babies over the long days that had to be got
through before it was time to hide the Easter eggs.
The schoolmaster who came every day to teach them was snowed up too
in his house, so they had no lessons to keep them busy. Séraphine
couldn't teach them, because she didn't know anything herself, which
was the best of reasons; all she could do was to sing French songs
without any tune in them over and over again till the babies had
learnt them, by which time the mother in the next room was almost
distracted. They had cooked their dolls, they had no lessons, they
couldn't get out and run in the garden,--I don't believe any baby in
the world could keep long out of a corner under such conditions, or
any mother, knowing its difficulties, be happy.
This particular mother didn't believe it either, and sat and
wondered what she could do. She sat and wondered in front of the
big fireplace, with her feet nearly in the fire. It had begun to
snow again harder than ever, and she knew there was no chance of the
babies getting out for two or three days. It grew dark, and when
the tea was brought in, and fresh peat had been thrown on the fire,
and the room was all full of firelight, she called the babies and
invited them to come and have tea with her, and sit comfortably on
a row of footstools in front of the fire, instead of solemnly round
the schoolroom table with Séraphine's stern eye petrifying them from
behind the teapot.
They loved having tea with their mother, although there was no jam
on the bread and butter as there was in the schoolroom. They liked
their mother without jam better a thousand times than Séraphine
with jam,--even if it had been the best jam in the world, which,
of course, as every baby knows, is apricot if it isn't strawberry.
They flew to fetch footstools, and sat on them munching their bread
and butter in the pleasant firelight, warming their toes at the
blaze like their mother, and getting hotter, and happier, and more
buttery every minute. Then their mother poured them each out a cup
of her own tea in her own pretty cups, with saucers and spoons all
proper, instead of the mortifying mugs they had in the schoolroom;
and the tea was so hot and sweet and delicious that it made them
feel as though their insides were being wrapped round in hot flannel
petticoats with sugar on them, which is the loveliest feeling in the
world.
'Now we're sitting like Polly Flinders,' said the mother.
'What's Flinders?' asked April.
'Is Flinders one girl?' asked June, scooping up the sugar at the
bottom of her cup.
May said nothing, but put out her tongue as far as it would go, and
then whisked it right round her mouth several times running with
considerable skill. There was some butter on her nose, and some on
her chin, and though she had a handkerchief, and a pocket to keep it
in, and every convenience for cleaning herself, she preferred taking
her tongue, and so not wasting either time or butter.
'Didn't I ever tell you about Polly Flinders?' asked the mother, who
had watched May's tongue, fascinated, till the last bit of butter had
been safely captured. 'Didn't you ever hear how she
Sat in the cinders
Warming her little toes?
Her mummy came and caught her
And whipped her little daughter
For spoiling her nice new clothes.'
[Illustration: LITTLE POLLY FLINDERS.
Little Polly Flinders
Sat on the cinders,
Warming her little toes;
Her mother came and caught her,
And whipp'd her little daughter,
For spoiling her nice new clothes.]
The babies looked at each other in astonishment.
'_Oh_, what a mummy!' cried April.
'_Poor_ Flinders!' cried May.
'Did the mummy whip that Flinders with the hand, or with one stick?'
asked June, deeply interested.
'I should think with her hand,' said the mother. 'You see, she had
spoilt all the nice clothes her mummy had made her for Christmas, and
it was very annoying.'
'Yes, but to whip _gleich_!' exclaimed May indignantly.
'I never did see one mummy like that before,' said April, shaking her
head with grave disapproval.
Their mother was silent. She had known the story of Polly Flinders
all her life, but had not noticed anything particularly blameworthy
in the conduct of Mrs. Flinders. Indeed, as a child she had thought
Mrs. Flinders had only done what was quite natural, and no more than
the aggravating Polly deserved. It took her, therefore, some moments
to readjust her views; but the babies were so frankly horrified that
she was sure her views needed readjusting.
'It was a pretty pale blue dress,' she murmured, trying to justify
Mrs. Flinders.
'But her foots was cold!' cried May.
'With ever so many tucks in it, all put in by the mummy.'
'But Flinders' _foots_ was cold!' shouted the three babies, fixing
their mother with six round reproachful eyes.
[Illustration: '_But Flinders'_ Foots _was cold_']
'And a beautiful new sash, with fringes on its ends--oh, babies,
_such_ a sash!'
'But Flinders' FOOTS was cold!' literally roared the babies,
astounded and perplexed beyond measure at their mother's support of
the wrong side. They knew very well the agonies of cold toes, and it
was beyond their comprehension how their mother could for a moment
think more of the dress, spoilt by an accident, than of the toes.
Then the mother left off defending Mrs. Flinders, and laughed,
and getting up went behind the row of agitated babies and kissed
each head one after the other, which was a sign that she gave in
and agreed with them. 'She needn't have whipped her,' she said
soothingly, 'a corner would have done quite as well, and she did
deserve that, for she was evidently a careless Polly.'
'And if there didn't was no corner?' suggested June with a boldness
of fancy that took everybody's breath away and produced a sudden
silence.
Nobody spoke after that for several seconds. April and May sat
thinking it out. June felt she must have said something clever, and
swelled with pride. 'There is _always_ corners,' said April at last,
turning on her, '_und Du bist das grösste Schaf das es giebt_,' she
added in nervous German, not having a sufficiently withering bit of
English ready. And if you, my dear little boys and girls who read
this, don't know what that means, I can only pity your exceeding
ignorance.
Then April, having settled June, who sat looking like an air-ball
just after it has been pricked, turned to her mother, 'Is that a
song, mummy, about Flinders?' she asked, clasping her hands round her
knees and propping her chin on them.
'Yes, it's a song--a nursery rhyme I learnt when I was little.'
'But has it got music?'
'Music?' the mother racked her brains to try and remember the music
belonging to Polly Flinders, and found none. She had a vague idea her
nurse used to hum the words to her, but no definite tune would come
into her mind. 'I never heard any music to it,' she said at last.
'Herr Schenk's songs all have music,' said April--Herr Schenk was the
schoolmaster--'and so have Séraphine's.'
'Oh yes,' said May, 'Séraphine's have lovely music, and if
Séraphine's have lovely music, mummy's songs must have much lovelier.'
The mother thought Séraphine's tunes were not so very lovely, and
she knew them all only too well, for how often had she been obliged
to go into another room out of earshot while they were being drummed
into the babies' heads? As for Herr Schenk's songs, he taught the
babies hymns--very slow German hymns called _chorales_; and as
there was no piano in the schoolroom, and he sang right down in his
boots, and they sang right up in the air, and they all sang out of
tune, the effect was so doleful and weird that the mother in the next
room often wondered how it was she didn't lift up her voice too, and
weep. Her dog simply couldn't bear it at all, and howled so miserably
when the _chorales_ began that he had to be turned out every day at
lesson-time.
'_Make_ music for Flinders, mummy,' said April.
'Make music?' echoed the mother, taken aback.
'Yes, make one tune, and then the babies can sing it.'
'But I can't.'
'But if Herr Schenk and Séraphine can?'
'But those aren't their own tunes.'
'Oh, but mummies can make everything,' said April, looking up at her
mother with the sweetest smile of absolute confidence. April's smile
was so pretty that it made you think her much prettier than she was
really. The mother used to feel sure that if angels ever smiled they
must do it just like that.
'But I can't make tunes,' repeated the mother, beginning to feel
uncomfortable, and wishing she had left the Flinders family alone.
'_Oh!_' cried all the babies together, and laughed aloud. _They_ were
not to be taken in like that, so their mummy needn't think so. Was
there ever anything that mummies could _not_ do? And _their_ mummy?
They looked at each other and shrieked with laughter, the idea was so
very ridiculous.
'Do you know how I feel, babies?' said the mother quickly. 'Just like
a game of Oranges and Lemons. I am sure it would do me a great deal
of good. Shall we play?'
But this had no effect. 'No, no,' they cried, jumping up and crowding
round her, 'we only wants Flinders! Make music, mummy!'
And then they began to call her their sweet, _pwecious_ mummy, their
little dear mummykins, and all the nice names they could think of;
and as they all tried to kiss her at once, she had to say she would
try, if only to save herself from suffocation.
Here was a thing--Polly Flinders, apparently so harmless, turning on
her and rending her!
'You will have to go away, then, while I try,' she said, feeling very
wretched, though with a faint hope that they would prefer to stay and
play games, and let her off making a tune rather than be banished.
But they made for the schoolroom door with the greatest alacrity.
'And then you calls us when it is ready,' they cried cheerfully, as
they disappeared.
I don't suppose any of you children who read this story have ever
written a tune, for if you have you are what is known as prodigies,
which are an unpleasant variety of children, happily, for the peace
of parents, exceedingly rare. But you leave off being a prodigy after
a certain age, and this mother was much too old to be one, and had
never shown the least symptoms of being one at any time; and when she
was left alone to write the tune, and knew it had somehow got to be
done, she felt as uncomfortable as you would if you were shut up in a
room alone with a piano and told to compose music. But what will not
mothers do for their children? You ask _your_ mother to write tunes
for you, and see if she will not do it at once! This mother went over
to the piano and sat down, and first of all wished she had never
heard of Polly Flinders and her toes. Then she wished that, having
heard of them, she had kept the knowledge of them from her children.
And then she began to agonise over a tune. You know there are some
people who can loftily write down tunes ten miles away from the
nearest piano; but this mother wasn't one of that sort, and she sat
and agonised, with the soft pedal on so that the babies should not
hear the bones of Polly's musical skeleton rattling before the skin
had been produced. Then, as she had no music-paper, she got a pencil
and a sheet of note-paper and wrote the tune down, the agonies at
this stage becoming acute. And then she stared at it gloomily, trying
to persuade herself that there was at least a sort of rude honesty
about it, and hoped the babies would be pleased.
'Come in, babies!' she called faintly.
This is the tune:--
[Music: LITTLE POLLY FLINDERS.
Little Polly Flinders
sat on the cinders,
warming her little toes.
Her Mother came and caught her,
and whipp'd her little daughter,
for spoiling her nice new clothes.]
and she needn't have been in any doubt as to the babies liking it,
for they loved it. They rushed in when she called them, tumbling over
each other in their hurry, and crowded round the mother who was still
sitting very much depressed at the piano, holding the notes to which
the reluctant Flinders had been reduced in her hand, and scrutinizing
them with profound disfavour. But when she had played and sung the
tune to the babies, and it had been received with acclamations of
delight, oh, what a load it was off her mind! I don't know who was
most pleased, the mother or the babies. They insisted on being taught
it at once, and in a very few minutes were dancing about the room
singing it so vigorously that what with the dancing and the singing
the whole house seemed to shake to the strains of _Polly Flinders_.
Indeed, when they reached the part where Polly's mother catches her
on that high note, their voices rose to the occasion with such a
shriek of goodwill that a row of stout china pots, which had always
up to then stood with great dignity and composure on the mantelpiece,
got such a fright and trembled so that they nearly tumbled off.
[Illustration: _The Strains of 'Polly Flinders'_]
Well, the mother had found out how to amuse her babies. Till Easter,
with its fresh supply of presents, should come, she would teach them
the English nursery rhymes, and make up tunes so that they might
sing them. At least it would be something new to them, for they had
been brought up on German chorales, varied latterly by Séraphine's
tra-la-la's. Their mother had sung little German songs to them as
babies, dear little songs about _Sternleins_, and _Engeleins_,
and _Kindleins_, and they knew all those by heart; but they had
not yet heard of the deeds of _Jack and Jill_, and the fate that
overtook _Miss Muffet_ (clearly a warning to all who make a practice
of sitting on tuffets), and the base behaviour of the gentleman in
_Where are you going to, my pretty maid_; or of the _Contrary Mary's_
extraordinary garden, or the glorious bribe of cushions and cream
offered _Curly Locks_, or of that wonderful pie that burst into song
the moment the astonished king cut it. The mother, encouraged by
the reception given to _Polly Flinders_, determined to try and turn
these into music too, so that the babies might have something to sing
that should neither be as filling as the chorales nor as frothy as
the tra-la-la's; and she set to work on _Mary, Mary_, the very next
morning, while the babies were clearing out their cupboards ready for
the Easter toys.
It was not any easier to do than the first had been; indeed, the
agonies seemed worse than ever, for a strange antipathy to a person
who could fill her garden with things like shells and bells and
people laid hold of the mother's soul, and grew and grew the more she
thought of it. But it did get finished and written out at last, and
here it is:--
[Music: MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
and pretty maids all of a row,
and pretty maids all of a row.]
Then, after lunch, she gave the babies some pictures to cut out of
the books they were already in, and some paste to paste them into
other books with; and though it would seem simpler to leave them in
the books they were in at first, the babies didn't think so, and cut
out and pasted with such energy that they were very soon covered with
paste all over, and might have been used as scrap-books themselves;
and when she had seen them fairly started she went away and shut
herself up alone with Miss Muffet, and wrestled with her till she too
had been forced into notes.
This is _Miss Muffet_:
[Music: LITTLE MISS MUFFET.
Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey,
When down came a spider and sat down beside her,
and frighten'd Miss Muffet away.]
Then, just as the babies were getting rather tired of pasting, the
servant came into the playroom with three letters on a salver, and
presented them solemnly to each baby in turn. They were astonished,
for they didn't get many letters, and wondered so long who they could
be from that they nearly forgot to open them and see; and when they
did, there was a lovely little pink letter inside, written in a large
round hand that they could easily read, inviting them to tea in the
library at four o'clock. The letters were written in German, and it
is no good my telling you all the nice things that were in them, for
I daresay you don't know a word of German.
* * * * *
At four o'clock, then, the three babies, with the paste all nicely
scraped off them, appeared in the library, and there were the three
footstools in front of the fire, and the mother's low chair at one
end, and the tea table drawn up close beside it; and to-day, as it
was a party, there was a jug of chocolate for the babies instead
of tea, and a plate piled up with dough nuts freshly baked, with a
decently big spoonful of jam in their middles instead of the little
speck that lurks, looking so silly, in the stale dough nuts you
buy in shops, and that tastes so much sillier than it looks; and
everything was so pleasant and cosy that the babies beamed all over
their faces as they settled themselves down before the fire and
smoothed their pinafores over their knees.
'Well, mummy?' said April, when they had drunk as much chocolate as
they could conveniently hold, and the dough nut sugar had been rubbed
off their cheeks,--for she knew there must be something else going to
happen, or they wouldn't have been invited like that.
'Well, babies?' said the mother, smiling at the three expectant faces.
'What does we do next, mummy?'
'Next? Why, I've got two more tunes for you.' And she pulled _Mary_
and _Miss Muffet_ out of her pocket.
'Oh that is nice!' cried May, jumping up and down on her stool.
'You's one pwecious mummy,' said June, with strong approval.
April gave her mother a look, as much as to say 'Didn't I know
mummies could do everything?' But she had no idea of what it had
been like, making those tunes in cold blood and broad daylight.
[Illustration: MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all of a row.]
'Well, my blessed babies,' began the mother, 'there was once a
girl called Mary, who had a garden full of roses, and lilies, and
buttercups, and daisies, and all the other flowers we have here in
the summer; but she was so queer that instead of taking care of them
and loving them, she dug them all up and threw them away.'
'What an awful Mawy,' observed June, who never could say r's.
'Then, where all the pretty things had been she put silver bells, and
cockle shells, and in the borders along the sides of the paths where
other people have hollyhocks, she put rows of pretty maids.'
'Pretty _Mädchens_?'
'And bells what you rings?'
'And shells how there is at the _bain-de-mer_?' The babies always
spoke of the seaside as the _bain-de-mer_, and pronounced it as
though it had only two syllables, with a very big accent on the first
one, so: BAINdmer. 'And then people used to come and look at her
over the hedge, and laugh, and ask her how her garden grew, for of
course the bells and shells wouldn't grow, and the pretty maids grew
so slowly that you couldn't see any difference in one summer at all.
And the neighbours called her Mary quite contrary, because she would
do things differently to everybody else, but she didn't mind a bit;
and when they came and jeered, and called out "Mary, Mary, quite
contrary, how does your garden grow?" she would answer back quite
good-naturedly "With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids
all of a row." And here's the tune she sang it to, and when I've told
you about Miss Muffet we'll go and sing them both.'
'But mummy,' interrupted May, 'was that pretty, in Mary's garden?'
'I think our sort of garden is much prettier,' said the mother.
'And I! And I! And I!' cried the three babies with conviction.
'Except for the pretty maids.'
'Yes, except for the pretty _Mädchens_.'
'They must have looked little dears, all in a row.'
'Oh they must have looked little very dears,' said April; 'they must
have looked like May,' she added, turning to May, who gave a sort
of pleased purr. April was always ready to fall upon May and fight
things out if needs be, but that did not prevent her thinking her, in
times of peace, an exceedingly beautiful person. The mother sometimes
saw her go up to May the day after her head had been washed, when her
face was almost lost in a shower of curls, and stroke her hair very
gently, and say softly '_Too_ pretty, _too_ pretty is your hair!'
Or she would take up her hand, and look at it and pat it, and say
'_Such_ dear tiny hands you got!' And as these flattering interludes
would as often as not take place in the breathing spaces of a boxing
match they didn't matter much, and certainly had no effect on May,
who never cared whether she were thought pretty or not.
Then the mother began to tell them about Miss Muffet, and of course
the first question the babies asked was 'What is a tuffet?' To which,
equally of course, the mother replied 'A thing you sit on.'
'But you sits on such a many things,' objected the astute June, 'and
they still isn't tuffets.'
'I think it must have been a three-legged stool,' said the mother,
who had gone the length of examining the pages of _Nuttall's
Pronouncing and Defining Dictionary_ in search of enlightenment, and
had found that tuffets were left severely alone.
'I thinks it must have been one sofa,' said June.
'A sofa?'
'Yes, else two people can't sit together on anything other than one
sofa.'
'But there weren't two people,'
'Yes, the spider did sit beside her.'
'But a spider isn't a people,' said April, looking puzzled.
'Yes she is,' said June.
'No she isn't,' said April, and then added, as though this truth had
just dawned on her, 'she's an animal, and animals aren't people,
they've got too many legs.'
'Oh that doesn't matter,' said June, airily.
'Oh yes it does,' said April; 'and there never isn't _one_ people
only, but always _two_--' and then she stopped, and looked worried.
'But if one of those peoples did go away? Then?' asked June; at which
April looked more worried than ever.
Now this mother wasn't much good at explaining grammar, and was sure
that even if she tried, the babies would only be more puzzled than
before, so she proposed that instead of arguing they should come to
the piano and learn the tunes she had written.
[Illustration: LITTLE MISS MUFFET.
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
When down came a spider,
And sat down beside her,
And frighten'd Miss Muffet away.]
They set to work with even more ardour than the day before, for had
they not been feasting on unaccustomed chocolate and dough nuts? And
the dough nuts, judging from the reckless enthusiasm with which the
two tunes were attacked and learnt, had got into their heads, which
is not the usual place for dough nuts, and shows how beautifully
light they must have been. Then they tried to act _Miss Muffet_, and
quarrelled over the preliminaries just as grown up people do, each
one wanting the best part for herself.
'I'se Miss Muffet!' shouted June, defiance in her eye.
'No, I!' cried May.
'No, _I_ shall be Muffet,' said April, very quietly and firmly.
'Oh then I'se the spider,' said June.
'Yes, and I is Muffet,' said April quickly.
'But I? What is I, then?' asked May, aggrieved.
'Oh, you can be the--the curds and whey,' said June, always ready
with brilliant suggestions.
'No, the tuffet,' said April.
May absolutely refused to be the curds and whey, and didn't at all
like the idea of being a tuffet, a thing for others to sit on, a mute
and inglorious three-legged stool, with nothing to say and nothing to
do; but she generally did as she was told, and after some grumbling
was persuaded to go on all fours, whereupon April took her seat with
great dignity on her back, and holding a cup with chocolate dregs to
represent the curds and whey, lifted up her voice and gave tongue to
the opening lines of the immortal ditty. Then there was a wild yell
such as never yet had been heard to issue from any spider, and June
flung herself on to the only vacant bit of tuffet she could see, and
as it was May's head and as she was a very fat and heavy spider, the
tuffet collapsed under the shock, flattening itself out straight, and
they all fell, shrieking loudly, into a heap. There was such a tangle
of arms and legs that the mother found it difficult to sort them out,
and set each baby on the feet that belonged to it again; and besides,
she was laughing, and you know what your thumbs feel like when you
laugh, and how weak they get, and how they won't pull. 'Miss Muffet's
too hard to act,' she said, comforting them, 'because of that
tiresome tuffet. Try _Mary, Mary_. One can be Mary, and the other two
the row of pretty maids. Two are just enough for a row.'
'And if one went away from that row--then?' inquired June. But her
mother sat down to the piano, and refused to argue.
This succeeded better. The pretty maids sang the first half, and
April, dancing up and down her garden path in front of them, answered
their questions with cheerful shrillness. They sang it over and over
again. The mother had to play it so often that she got to dislike it
with all her heart, and still they went on, the pretty maids beating
time with their feet, and the busy Mary flying up and down faster
and faster and more and more breathlessly, her hair streaming out
behind, and her face aflame. At last the mother felt as though she
were being mesmerized, and hardly noticed what they were doing, till
a strange spluttering noise made her look up, and there stood the
pretty maids gasping, with their eyes and noses and mouths full of
chocolate which April was diligently pouring out of the jug on to
their heads, muttering as she did so '_Doch, doch, Du musst begossen
werden_,'--'Yes, yes, thou must be watered.'
Now this was a dreadful thing to do, and could only be excused by
the state of wild excitement into which she had worked herself over
the part of Mary. The mother was so astonished that for a moment she
sat looking on without saying a word. The pretty maids, though they
choked, quite entered into the spirit of the thing, and felt that
as they were growing in a garden it was only right they should be
watered. And besides, the chocolate was very nice still, in spite of
its being cold, and trickled agreeably down into the mouths they were
careful to hold as wide open as they would go. But they wouldn't go
wide enough, and most of it trickled down over their pinafores to
the edge of their dresses, and then dropped off in thick drops on
to their mother's favourite carpet, making dark and horrid pools at
their feet.
Oh, it was a dreadful ending to a party! And the worst of it was they
were so excited that they never gave a thought to the dreadfulness
of it, which made it very difficult for their mother to rebuke them.
'Oh,' she said, pointing to the two pools on the carpet, 'Oh,' and
when she had said that she stopped, and didn't seem able to go on. I
don't know whether she was trying not to cry at the spoilt carpet,
or trying not to laugh at the spoilt babies, who looked pitiable
objects now with their heads all over chocolate, while April stood
staring at them in consternation, the empty jug in her hand.
After you have been very excited and happy there is always a horrible
time that comes when you feel so flat, and dull, and stale, that
you are more like ginger-beer without the ginger and the froth than
anything else. That is how the babies felt when they were having
the chocolate washed off their faces and heads, and were being put,
with all the fizz gone out of them, into premature beds. It was very
difficult to get the chocolate out of their hair, and Séraphine
expressed her disapproval by scrubbing with such pitiless vigour
that they felt quite dazed. And then it was bewildering besides
having their heads washed on any night but Saturday. It seemed to
upset things so, and they were used to regular ways,--head-washing
on Saturday nights, clean clothes on Sunday morning, a smell of
soap-suds pervading the passages on Monday--that is what had always
happened ever since the world, with people in it wanting washing,
began. Eve, explained April to June in subdued murmurs while they
were undressing, used to wash her long yellow hair on Saturdays too,
dipping it up and down in the waters of Paradise; and as soap wasn't
among the things that grew on the trees there, she used bananas
instead, which were after all much more like soap than like bananas;
and June asked whether she ate what was left over of the soap, when
she had finished her washing, and April said people didn't eat soap,
and June said people did eat bananas, and they talked it over in
whispers, trying vainly to settle it, as they went shivering to bed.
* * * * *
The next morning, when the mother got up, she went to her bedroom
window and tried to look out; but the snow was heaped up outside on
the sills half way to the top. She was very sorry for the babies, who
had been shut up now for more than a week. They seemed depressed,
too, at breakfast time, and May had a cold, and kept on sneezing
into her bread and milk. The first time she did it, and the second
time too, the others said, _Gesundheit_, which is what people say in
Germany when you sneeze; but when she went on doing it and didn't
seem inclined to stop, they were irritated, and left off saying
_Gesundheit_ and said _pfui_ instead, which is what people say in
Germany when they are disgusted.
May didn't like having _pfui_ said to her, and sniffed in a very
injured manner; and Séraphine had got out of bed the wrong side,
and was shrouded in impenetrable gloom and mystery; and there was a
strong north wind blowing which got in at all the cracks and made it
harder than ever to keep warm; so that things were looking rather bad
all round.
Long before it had been time to get up, April and June had talked
over in their beds whether their mother would invite them to tea and
tunes again after the chocolate incident or not. June thought she
would, because June's experience of mothers was that they were a
long-suffering race, and slow to anger; but April had been the chief
sinner, and was full of doubts. They would not have mentioned it
for the world at breakfast, but looked out of the corners of their
eyes very often at their mother while they were eating their bread
and milk--so often, indeed, that once or twice the spoonfuls went
astray, and emptied themselves on to their bibs instead of into their
mouths, giving May an opportunity of calling out _Schmutzfinck_,
which she did at once in a very loud voice, greatly to her relief and
satisfaction, revenging herself in this way for the _pfuis_ that had
been hurled at her. _Schmutzfinck_ is not a polite thing to call any
one, and means that the person who says it thinks you exceedingly
dirty and generally objectionable; but it is wonderful what relief it
gave May to say it,--she quite brightened up, and left off sniffing.
The mother was reading letters, and didn't seem to notice what
anybody was doing, and Séraphine, whose duty it was to see that
the bibs didn't get more than their fair share of breakfast, never
bothered about either bibs or babies, but sat staring into space with
a wild misgiving eye. There are some days, you know, when the best of
people get out of bed the wrong side, and can't get right again the
whole day, and set other people wrong too, and it was perfectly clear
from Séraphine's face that that was what she had done that morning.
Corners would await the babies that day at every turn if they were
much with Séraphine, however carefully they might climb the narrow
path of being good; so the mother carried April and June off with
her into the store room after breakfast, and while she was ordering
the dinner they gambolled innocently among the sausages, and played
at hide and seek between the barrels of pickled cabbage, and visited
their old kitten, now grown into a big and churlish cat, but beloved
still for old sake's sake and for its unforgettable sweetness on the
first day they ever saw it, when it arrived at lesson-time in Herr
Schenk's pocket, its front paws resting on the edge of the pocket,
and its face resting on its paws, and its blue eyes, grown so green
and fierce, gazing dreamily round. It was a Tom-cat, but the babies
called it Rose.
'Now what shall I do with these babies of mine to-day?' the mother
was asking herself all the time she was saying _Ja_ to every
suggestion of the cook's. Somebody from the village came and wanted
to speak to her, and as it turned into a long conversation she had to
send the babies back to Séraphine; and then something else happened
that kept her, and it was nearly an hour before she could get away
and see what was going on in the schoolroom. But the babies had made
up a game for themselves that had put Séraphine to flight and was
keeping them quite happy. They had got May on to the sofa, covered
her well up, told her she was very ill and must sleep, and when the
mother came in, April and June were striding up and down the room
shouting German lullabies at the top of their voices.
'She shall sleep,' explained June in a stentorian whisper to her
mother.
'But how can she with such a noise going on?'
'It isn't one noise, it's _Wiegenlieder_,' said June offended;
and turning away began again to roar out something about _Schlaf,
Kindlein, schlaf_, in a voice that shook the walls.