"Did you ever lose the sheep before, Bopeep?" asked Mollie, after they had walked a little way in silence.
"Oh my, yes," returned Bopeep. "I'm losing them all the time. It is a part of my duty to lose them. If I didn't, you know, the nursery rhyme couldn't go on."
"And you always find them again?" Mollie put in.
"Always. That's got to happen, too. If they didn't come back and bring their tails behind them the nursery rhyme would be spoiled again."
"Then I don't see why you feel so badly about it," said Mollie.
"And I only get five cents a quart."
"I have to," replied Bopeep. "That's part of my business, too. I sometimes wish old Mother Goose hadn't employed me to look after the sheep at all, because it keeps me crying all the time, and I don't find crying very pleasant. Why, do you know, I have been in this sheep-losing business for nearly two hundred years now, and I've cried about seventy gallons of tears every year. Just think of that. That means fourteen thousand gallons of tears, and I only get five cents a quart, which doesn't more than pay my dressmaker's bills. I asked my employers some years ago to let me have an assistant to do the crying for me, but they wouldn't do it, which I think was very mean, don't you?"
"Yes, I do," said Mollie. "I should think just losing the sheep was hard enough work for a little girl like you to attend to."