The Solitary Summer

"I'll tell you what I'll do, babies," I said, anxious to restore complete serenity on such a lovely day, and feeling slightly ashamed of my uncalled-for zeal--indeed, April was right, and proper mothers leave lessons and torments to somebody else, and devote all their energies to petting--"I'll give a ball after tea." "Yes!" shouted three exultant voices, "and invite all the babies!" "So now you must arrange what you are going to wear. I suppose you'd like the same supper as usual? Run away to Seraphine and tell her to get you ready." They seized their baskets and their boxes of snails and rushed off into the bushes, calling for Seraphine with nothing but rapture in their voices, and French and the diable quite forgotten. These balls are given with great ceremony two or three times a year. They last about an hour, during which I sit at the piano in the library playing cheerful tunes, and the babies dance passionately round the pillar. They refuse to waltz together, which is perhaps a good thing, for if they did there would always be one left over to be a wallflower and gnash her teeth; and when they want to dance squares they are forced by the stubbornness of numbers to dance triangles. At the appointed hour they knock at the door, and come in attired in the garments they have selected as appropriate (at this last ball the April baby wore my shooting coat, the May baby had a muff, and the June baby carried Seraphine's umbrella), and, curtseying to me, each one makes some remark she thinks suitable to the occasion.