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266 And Mother said, “I don’t wonder your head aches, after all those sweet things.” And she looked as if she would like to cry too.

“I don’t know what Daddy will say,” said Mother, and then she gave them each a nasty powder and put them both to bed.

“I wonder what he will say,” said Fabian just before he went to sleep.

“I don’t know,” said Rosamund, and, strange to say, they don’t know to this hour what Daddy said. Because next day they both had measles, and when they got better every one had forgotten about what had happened on Christmas Eve. And Fabian and Rosamund had forgotten just as much as everybody else. So I should never have heard of it but for the clockwork mouse. It was he who told me the story, just as the children told it to him in the town in the library in the house in the town they built in their own library with the books and the bricks and the pretty picture blocks which were given to them by kind Uncle Thomas. And if you do not believe the story it is not my fault: I believe every word the mouse said, for I know the good character of that clockwork mouse, and I know it could not tell an untruth even if it tried.