The Solitary Summer - Elizabeth von Arnim

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than Noah, at which stage their questions became so searching as to completely confound me; and as no one likes being confounded, and it is especially regrettable when a parent is placed in such a position, I brought the course to an abrupt end by assuming that owl-like air of wisdom peculiar to infallibility in a corner, and telling them that they were too young to understand these things for the present; and they, having a touching faith in the truth of every word I say, gave three contented little purrs of assent, and proposed that we should play instead at rolling down the grass bank under the south windows—which I did not do, I am glad to remember.

      But the schoolmaster, after four weeks' teaching, has got them as far as Moses, and safely past the Noah's ark on which I came to grief, and if glibness is a sign of knowledge then they have learned the story very thoroughly. Yesterday, after he had gone, they emerged into the verandah fresh from Moses and bursting with eagerness to tell me all about it.

      "Herr Schenk told us to-day about Moses," began the April baby, making a rush at me.

      "Oh?"

      "Yes, and a boser, boser Konig who said every boy must be deaded, and Moses was the allerliebster."

      "Talk English, my dear baby, and not such a dreadful mixture," I besought.

      "He wasn't a cat."

      "A cat?"

      "Yes, he wasn't a cat, that Moses—a boy was he."

      "But of course he wasn't a cat," I said with some severity; "no one ever supposed he was."

      "Yes, but mummy," she explained eagerly, with much appropriate hand- action, "the cook's Moses is a cat."

      "Oh, I see. Well?"

      "And he was put in a basket in the water, and that did swim. And then one time they comed, and she said—"

      "Who came? And who said?"

      "Why, the ladies; and the Konigstochter said, 'Ach hormal, da schreit so etwas.'"

      "In German?"

      "Yes, and then they went near, and one must take off her shoes and stockings and go in the water and fetch that tiny basket, and then they made it open, and that Kind did cry and cry and strampel so"—here both the babies gave such a vivid illustration of the strampeln that the verandah shook—"and see! it is a tiny baby. And they fetched somebody to give it to eat, and the Konigstochter can keep that boy, and further it doesn't go."

      "Do you love Moses, mummy?" asked the May baby, jumping into my lap, and taking my face in both her hands—one of the many pretty, caressing little ways of a very pretty, caressing little creature.

      "Yes," I replied bravely, "I love him."

      "Then I too!" they cried with simultaneous gladness, the seal having thus been affixed to the legitimacy of their regard for him. To be of such authority that your verdict on every subject under heaven is absolute and final is without doubt to be in a proud position, but, like all proud positions, it bristles with pitfalls and drawbacks to the weak-kneed; and most of my conversations with the babies end in a sudden change of subject made necessary by the tendency of their remarks and the unanswerableness of their arguments. Happily, yesterday the Moses talk was brought to an end by the April baby herself, who suddenly remembered that I had not yet seen and sympathised with her dearest possession, a Dutch doll called Mary Jane, since a lamentable accident had bereft it of both its legs; and she had dived into the schoolroom and fished it out of the dark corner reserved for the mangled and thrust it in my face before I had well done musing on the nature and extent of my love for Moses—for I try to be conscientious—and bracing myself to meet the next question.

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