“Oh, let’s,” said the Small Girl. “And I’ll tell you first that I want a doll—and I want it to have a pink dress—and I want it to have eyes that open and shut—and I want it to have shoes and stockings—and I want it to have curly hair——”
She had to stop, because she didn’t have any breath left in her body, and when she got her breath back, she said, “Now, what do you want, Mother—more than anything else in the whole wide world?”
“Well,” said her mother, “I want a chocolate mouse.”
“Oh,” said the Small Girl scornfully, “I shouldn’t think you’d want that.”
“Why not?”
“Because a chocolate mouse—why, a chocolate mouse isn’t anything.”
“Oh, yes, it is,” said the Small Girl’s mother. “A chocolate mouse is Dickory Dock, and Pussy-Cat-Pussy-Cat-Where-Have-You-Been—and it’s Three-Blind-Mice—and it’s A-Frog-He-Would-a-Wooing-Go—and it’s——”
The Small Girl’s eyes were dancing. “Oh, tell me about it——”
And her mother said: “Well, the mouse is Dickory-Dock ran up the clock, and the mouse in Pussy-Cat-Pussy-Cat was frightened under a chair, and the mice in Three-Blind-Mice ran after the farmer’s wife, and the mouse in A-Frog-He-Would-a-Wooing-Go went down the throat of the crow——”
And the Small Girl said, “Could a chocolate mouse do all that?”