The next rhyme the mother took up was the one about Curly Locks. You English children all know it, of course,—how somebody, who evidently wanted to marry her, offered her a cushion as a perpetual seat if only she would be his, and instead of washing dishes and feeding pigs, as she was doing when he made her his offer, she was to spend her time sitting on this cushion sewing, and being fed at intervals with strawberries and sugar and cream.
'Strawberries and cream, babies, are very nice things.'
'Ach ja!' sighed the babies.
'But I shouldn't have liked the cushion and the needlework all day long.'
'No, no,' agreed the babies.
'And I know what I would have done in Curly Locks' place—I'd have let the young man go, and kept to the pigs.'
'But the strawberries?' insinuated May.
'Ach ja!' sighed April.
'I'd have let the strawberries go too,' said the mother; anything rather than the hot cushion and the sewing.'
'Ach nein!' sighed April softly, shaking her head, 'better take the strawberries.' And the other two silently nodded their approval.