‘Nobody asked you, Sir,’ she said
It was the only tune of the six new ones that they were to learn that night, for it was already long past their bedtime. May sat on a sofa near, and applauded frantically. June made a very spirited milkmaid, and when the young man declared he wouldn't marry her, began to box with him, and as he turned tail and fled, pursued him round and round the room, defiantly shrieking '"Nobody asked you, Sir," she said,' till she couldn't go on for want of breath. The audience on the sofa was delighted, and clapped and cheered with all its might. The performance had to be given several times over, and the mother was as pleased as she could be that they liked to learn her tunes. You see they were babies who wanted very little to make them happy.
Then Séraphine appeared in the doorway, and though she said nothing, looked such unutterable tubs and bedtime, that the mother, gathering all three together into her arms and giving them a final hug, told them they must go quickly, and promised to come and say good-night when they were in bed.
'It's English prayers to-night,' said April, as they went away. 'Won't you come when we says them, mummy?'
'Yes, I'll come. Be off now, my blessed darlings.'
The mother put the tunes together when they had gone, and began to shut the piano. The babies had been taught so many prayers by Herr Schenk and Séraphine that they had had to be divided into three sets, and the German ones were said one night, and the French ones the next night, and the English ones the night after that. In Herr Schenk's set there was a German hymn as well as the prayers, and in Séraphine's set there was a plaintive little tune to a short prayer: only in the English set there was no tune, although amongst the prayers was Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.
The mother, slowly shutting the piano, and putting things a little straight, thought of this, and came to the conclusion that to write one more tune wouldn't make much difference to her, and, as it would be a hymn, it would finish off her week of tune-writing in a sweet and holy manner. And I don't know how it was, but though she had spent so much time struggling with all the other tunes, and had had such difficulties with them, and had suffered such horrid pangs, the hymn tune was finished in five minutes, and by the time she went up to say good-night to the babies it was written out and ready for them to learn the next day.
And so they did learn it the next day, and have sung it ever since on English prayer nights; and they look so good and angelic while they do it, kneeling in a row in their long nightgowns, with bowed heads and folded hands, that the mother sitting in the midst is sure they must be the dearest babies in the world. But as that is exactly what other mothers think of their babies, and as everybody can't be right, I don't suppose they can really be the dearest, although I know that they are very dear. This is the hymn tune:—
GENTLE JESUS, MEEK AND MILD.