CURLY LOCKS.
There were only two rhymes left, and the mother took up the top one. It was Sing a Song of Sixpence. But the pie in it was a difficulty, because pies and pie-dishes don't exist in Germany, and the babies had never seen one, and seemed, moreover, incapable of imagining one.
SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE.
Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie;
When the pie was open'd the birds began to sing,
Was not that a dainty dish to set before a King.
'What's a pie?' asked June at once; and the mother began to explain pies,—as she thought, with beautiful clearness. She explained pies in theory and pies in practice, their nature and uses; pies generalised and pies particularised, and of particularised pies particularly this pie, with its wonderful blackbirds who went on singing, undaunted by having been baked; and when she had finished, and was looking round for a gleam of interest, they sat stolidly gazing into the fire, and June merely said, 'But what's a pie?'