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.