'Oh, she did sneeze so badly!' whispered April, with uplifted hands; 'Oh such a lot of times! Oh such a very lot of times!' And seeing that May had got her arms outside the cushion she had put on her chest, she pounced on them, dragged them underneath again, smoothed the cushion with resounding pats, and, bending down, shouted schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf, into her ear. Séraphine was nowhere to be seen, and indeed the lullabies were very maddening. May, however, seemed to like them, and lay on the sofa quite comfortable, and pleased at doing nothing; and though she sneezed a good deal, was otherwise enjoying herself.
'That child's ears can't be very sensitive,' thought the mother, getting away as quickly as possible; and she shut all the doors between the schoolroom and the drawing-room, and, as lullabies were the fashion, wrote a tune for Hush-a-bye Baby.
HUSH-A-BYE, BABY.
Hush-a-bye, baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down comes baby and cradle and all.
By lunch time things were looking brighter. Séraphine had been so deafened by the singing that she had kept out of the way and left the babies alone; the mother was exhausted but pleased, for she had managed to write three tunes; the thermometer had gone up several degrees, the sun was shining gaily, and the babies would be able to go and skate on the stream at the end of the garden. It was the Thursday in Holy Week, and if a thaw set in soon there would still be a chance of a green Easter, and the eggs would be hidden after all in the garden. Of course if the garden is frozen up at Easter, or if it rains, the eggs have to be hidden in the house, under the tables and chairs, which is never half such fun; but where the babies lived it was nearly always fine and blue on Easter Sunday, and they had never yet been prevented from having their egg-hunt out of doors.
The mother watched them go off with their skates after lunch, jumping and running down the path that had been shovelled in the snow, and even Séraphine, the moment she got out of the house into the blessed sunshine, began to look happy, and as though life, after all, were a very pleasant thing. 'And so it is,' thought the mother, as she stood for a moment in the sun, breathing in the pure cold air, and sheltered by the house from the north wind, 'and so it always will be, as long as there is sun to shine and people with the grace to say thank you.' And she went into the house and wrote three more tunes.
When they were finished she leant back in her chair and felt rather less sure about the pleasantness of life. 'May I never make another!' she said to herself. 'To-morrow is Good Friday, and the babies go to church. On Easter eve the egg-basket comes, and each one will be busy hiding her eggs. On Easter Sunday they will go to church again, and in the afternoon look for the eggs. And then perhaps the snow will be gone, and lessons will begin again, and the garden grow greener and greener every day, and never, never, never need I make any more tunes!' And she gave a deep sigh of relief, for you see she had only made the tunes to please the babies when they had nothing else to please them, and wouldn't have done so for any other person or reason in the world.