The April Baby's Book of Tunes / with the story of how they came to be written

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

At first when it began to snow they were delighted, and got out their sleigh and their snow-boots, and harnessed their mother's big dog to the sleigh, and drove him up and down the paths, only laughing all the louder when he ran them against a tree and pitched them off into the snow. But the next day the snow was so deep that it covered the sleigh right up, and came over their knees, and got inside their stockings at the top, and made them very uncomfortable; so they stayed indoors, and finished the presents they were making for their mother's Easter surprise.

German Easters are very nice things, something like Christmas, only instead of tables covered with presents round the Christmas tree, the presents are hidden out in the garden, in the grass or among the bushes that are generally just turning a faint green. Everybody gives everybody else presents; and then there are eggs of all sorts and sizes, some in sugar with chocolate things inside, and some in chocolate with sugar things inside, and some in china with presents inside, and a great many real eggs, hard-boiled, and dyed in colours that would astonish the hens who laid them, and you eat more of them than is good for you and afterwards are sorry.

April, May, and June knitted mittens for their mother. At Christmas they knitted mittens, and at Easter they knitted mittens, and for her birthday they knitted mittens; so that there was never any need for her to bother about buying mittens. They could all knit very nicely, and their mother used to say a little while before any of these festivals that she hoped Father Christmas, or the Easter hare, or the birthday sprite meant to bring her some mittens that time, for she loved them better than anything else. Then the babies were delighted, because knitting was easy, and it was so convenient that their mother should happen to like just what they liked best to make.

But in two days they had finished the mittens, and still it went on snowing.

Then they had to fall back upon their dolls, for it was snowing as though it never meant to stop. Never had been seen such an Easter. People went about saying, 'Did you ever?' to the people they met, and couldn't get over it at all. The window panes were sheets of ice, for there were I don't know how many degrees of frost, and each night it froze harder than it had done the night before. In the daytime the rooms were full of a wonderful white light from the snow outside, and the fires blazed extra cheerfully, and it was very cosy indoors in their mother's pretty rooms, where flowers blossomed all the year round, no matter what was going on outside, and where it always smelt of violets.

For two days, then, the babies played contentedly enough with their dolls. But dolls are but mortal, and how can you expect a doll you have had given you at Christmas to be anything but mangled by Easter? What they were playing with could hardly be called dolls at all, for although there was a great abundance of arms, and legs, and heads, and dresses, and wigs, and eyes, there was not one single complete doll in all the heap. June went about rattling half a dozen eyes in her pocket as grown-up people rattle their money; and when her mother asked her what made that noise, she pulled out a handful of them in different sizes, and they looked so like real eyes that it quite gave her mother what is known as a turn,—which is a sort of feeling as though you were being suddenly pulled inside out and back again very quickly.

In two more days they had got to the stage in doll-playing in which you begin to chop up parts of the bodies and boil them, and warm bits of the wax and mould it into puddings, and make reckless porridge out of the bran stuffing and the water your face was washed in before dinner,—the stage, that is, which comes last of all, and just before you are put in the corner.

And still it went on snowing.

Their mother, who had been placidly reading all this time, began to be uneasy when she saw with what ardour the cooking in the next room was being carried on. The playroom opened into the library, where she sat this cold weather like Polly Flinders, warming her toes; and she got up every now and then and peeped in, stealing away again softly, half inclined to laugh, and yet disturbed by visions of corners in the near future as she saw the three chopping, and pounding, and stirring, with scarlet cheeks and dishevelled hair and mouths shut tight, and an oddly vindictive look on their faces, as though there was more than mere cooking in what they were doing,—the look almost of those who are paying off old scores at last, and can't do it too thoroughly. And if you want to know what vindictive means, you look at your nurse's face next time she takes you behind a tree in the Park to shake you in comfort, without the least provocation, and when you know you have been an angel.