“Now run along and let Ma put you to bed,” said Pa, and he took his fiddle out of its box.
Laura and Mary lay in their trundle bed and listened to the Sunday hymns, for even the fiddle must not sing the week-day songs on Sundays.
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” Pa sang, with the fiddle. Then he sang:
“Shall I be carried to the skies,
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?”
Laura began to float away on the music, and then she heard a clattering noise, and there was Ma by the stove, getting breakfast. It was Monday morning, and Sunday would not come again for a whole week.
That morning when Pa came in to breakfast he caught Laura and said he must give her a spanking.
First he explained that today was her birthday, and she would not grow p
roperly next year unless she had a spanking. And then he spanked so gently and carefully that it did not hurt a bit.
“One—two—three—four—five—six,” he counted and spanked, slowly. One spank for each year, and at the last one big spank to grow on.
Then Pa gave her a little wooden man he had whittled out of a stick, to be company for Charlotte. Ma gave her five little cakes, one for each year that Laura had lived with her and Pa. And Mary gave her a new dress for Charlotte. Mary had made the dress herself, when Laura thought she was sewing on her patchwork quilt.
And that night, for a special birthday treat, Pa played “Pop Goes the Weasel” for her.
He sat with Laura and Mary close against his knees while he played. “Now watch,” he said. “Watch, and maybe you can see the weasel pop out this time.” Then he sang:
“A penny for a spool of thread,
Another for a needle,
That’s the way the money goes—”
Laura and Mary bent close, watching, for they knew now was the time.
“Pop! (said Pa’s finger on the string.)
Goes the weasel! (sang the fiddle, plain as plain.)”
But Laura and Mary hadn’t seen Pa’s finger make the string pop.
“Oh, please, please, do it again!” they begged him. Pa’s blue eyes laughed, and the fiddle went on while he sang:
“All around the cobbler’s bench,
The monkey chased the weasel,
The preacher kissed the cobbler’s wife—
Pop! goes the weasel!”
They hadn’t seen Pa’s finger that time, either. He was so quick they could never catch him.
So they went laughing to bed and lay listening to Pa and the fiddle singing:
“There was an old darkey