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.
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:—
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY.
