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."