When you had run a thousand hundred times round the table you came to
the blue house. It stood behind Jenny's rocking-chair, where Jenny
couldn't see it, in a blue garden. The walls and ceilings were blue;
the doors and staircases were blue; everything in all the rooms was
blue.

Mary ran round and round. She loved the padding of her feet on the
floor and the sound of her sing-song:

"The pussies are blue, the beds are blue, the matches are blue and the
mousetraps and all the litty mouses!"

Mamma was always there dressed in a blue gown; and Jenny was there,
all in blue, with a blue cap; and Mark and Dank and Roddy were there,
all in blue. But Papa was not allowed in the blue house.

Mamma came in and looked at her as she ran. She stood in the doorway
with her finger on her mouth, and she was smiling. Her brown hair was
parted in two sleek bands, looped and puffed out softly round her
ears, and plaited in one plait that stood up on its edge above her
forehead. She wore a wide brown silk gown with falling sleeves.

"Pretty Mamma," said Mary. "In a blue dress."


V.

Every morning Mark and Dank and Roddy knocked at Mamma's door, and if
Papa was there he called out, "Go away, you little beasts!" If he was