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:
LITTLE MISS MUFFET.
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.