re better
carried out.

A little English girl, named Patsie, came over to visit her German
friends, Gretel and Barbara, shortly before Easter this year; and she
was much surprised to find all the shop-windows filled with hares; hares
made of chocolate, toy hares, hares with fine red coats on, hares
trundling wheelbarrows or carrying baskets full of Easter eggs. Moreover
there was no end to the picture post cards representing the hare in
various costumes, and in some connection with Easter eggs. One of these
post cards represented a hare crawling out of a large broken egg just
like a chicken.

Patsie asked her little friends eagerly what this all meant.

"Who is the Hare?" she said. "I do so want to know all about him."

"Why, _of course_, it is the Easter Hare," they replied.

"Is it possible that you have not heard of him? O, you _poor_ English
children! Why, he brings us the eggs on Easter Sunday morning!" said
Gretel.

"O don't you know," said Barbara, "he hides them in the garden, unless
it rains or is very wet; then we have to stay in our bedrooms for fear
of frightening him, and he lays them downstairs in the dining-room or
drawing-room. However, this has only happened once since I was born, and
I am nine years old; it _must_ be always fine at Easter."

"We have to let all the blinds down before he will come into our garden,
he is so dreadfully nervous," said Gretel. "Then he hides the eggs in
the most unexpected places, we have to hunt and hunt a long time before
we have found them all. Last year we discovered an egg some weeks
afterwards; luckily it was a glass one filled with sweeties; for if it
had been of chocolate, we could not have eaten it, after it had lain on
the damp mould, where the snails and worms would have crawled over it.
Some of the eggs are made of chocolate or marzipan or sugar, and some
are real eggs coloured blue or red or brown, or even sometimes with
pictures on them."

"We had two dear little baskets with dollies in them, and a big Easter
Hare made of gingerbread, as well as the eggs this year," said Barbara.
"We hunt and hunt in every corner of the garden, and then we divide our
treasures afterwards on two plates, so that is quite fair."

"You are lucky children, why does not the Hare come to England?" said
Patsie. "I am sure little English children would appreciate him too!"

"Well," said Gretel answering in verse:

"My dear mother says to me,
That he will not cross the