'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,'