‘Perhaps they will,’ said Sally kindly. ‘Anyway, it is the first time I ever caught anything when I went fishing, and I am glad it is a ball and not a fish, aren’t you?’
CHAPTER IX
THE PERIWINKLE FAMILY
That night Sally couldn’t go to sleep.
She tossed and turned in her little white bed. She watched Snow White’s wings move lazily to and fro on the window-sill. She had two drinks of water. But still she couldn’t go to sleep.
‘Mother,’ called Sally, ‘Mother, I can’t go to sleep.’
So Mother came to smooth Sally’s pillow and to tuck in the bed covers that were sadly tumbled and twisted about.
‘Shut your eyes,’ said Mother softly, with a hand on Sally’s forehead, ‘and think of little white sheep jumping over a wall, one after another, one after another, until you fall asleep.’
Sally shut her eyes just as Mother said and tried to count the little white sheep. But instead of jumping nicely over the wall, the little white sheep ran round and round the field as fast as ever they could, and this made Sally feel so wide awake that her blue eyes flew open with a jerk and she sat straight up in bed.
‘Mother,’ she called again, ‘Mother, I want a drink of water.’
It was Father, not Mother, who came into Sally’s room this time, and he must have known that Sally wanted company more than she wanted a drink of water. For he lay down beside Sally on the bed and took her hand in his.