Now when the Tortoise came to the school it was high noon, and all the children were waiting open-mouthed for their mammas and the lunches which they expected. Such rows and rows of wide hungry mouths! Madame Tortoise moved slowly up and down and round and round, eyeing the various children who begged for the nice wiggly worms. "H'm!" she said to herself, "hungry children seem to look considerably alike, and none of them are so wondrously beautiful when their mouths are wide open greedily. I wonder which are Mrs. Partridge's children. She told me to give this lunch to the handsomest babies here. Well, I will, and if I make a mistake it will not be my fault. Hello! Here are my dear little Turtlets! Bless the babies, how pretty they are! Why, I declare, I never realized that they were so handsome. Certainly, they are the best-looking children in the school. Then I must give them Mrs. Partridge's luncheon, for so I promised. Yes, my little ones, here is your lunch which I brought for you. And when you have finished that, here is another, some nice, fat, wiggly worms which mother collected on the way,—a prize for the handsomest children in the school."
So the little Turtlets fared wonderfully well that day; but the poor little Partridges went hungry, and had dreadful headaches, and went home peeping sadly to their silly mother. And Mrs. Partridge had no more sense than to be angry with Madame Tortoise, which I think was very unfair, don't you? For the latter had only done as she was bidden by her silly and conceited neighbor.
But after that the Tortoise and the Partridge never spoke to each other, and their children would not play together at school.
THE EARLY GIRL
HERE were once two girls who were very dear friends, Zaïca and Tourtourelle. One morning Zaïca woke up and said, "O Tourtourelle! Last night I had such a strange dream!"
"And so did I!" cried Tourtourelle. "Let us tell each other the dreams. But you first, Zaïca."