sea;
That he fears his eggs would break
And his precious goods might shake.

He's a fairy you must know,
Little Barbara tells you so;
When he cocks his ears and blinks,
Then of Easter eggs he thinks."

"Yes," interrupted Barbara, "we really and truly saw him one Easter
Sunday morning when we came back from church, just at the end of our
street, where the gardens join the fields. He had a friend with him, or
perhaps it was Mrs Easter Hare. They both looked very alarmed when they
saw us, and tore off as fast as they could scuttle, and hid in the
corn-fields. I can't remember if he had his red coat on, can you,
Gretel?"

"No I don't think he had, he was quietly dressed in his brown fur suit,
with a white tail to the coat," said Gretel.

Now mother had been puzzled for some time to think whatever connection
there could be between Easter Day and the Hare, and she could not find
out. But the other day a kind friend told her: she could never have been
able to think of it herself, it is such a queer reason. The legend is
that as the Hare always sleeps with its eyes open, it was the only
living creature that witnessed the Resurrection of our Blessed Lord, and
therefore for ever afterwards it has become associated with Easter.

The Easter egg is easier to account for; the idea there is, that as the
little chicken breaks through the hard shell, and awakes to new life, so
Christ broke the bars of death on the first glorious Easter morning. So
the simple egg has become a symbol or sign of a great heavenly truth.
Even little children can understand this if they think about it, and
they will be able to find out other things too that are symbols in the
same way.

"One year," said Barbara to Patsie, "we spent Easter Sunday at a farm in
the country. We made beautiful nests of moss all ready for the Easter
Hare. And just when father had called to us to come out and look for the
eggs, we saw to our disgust that the great pigs with their dirty old
snouts were already hunting for them, so we rushed down and had to drive
them away first. The geese too seemed to want to join in the game; it
was fine fun, I can tell you. We filled our pinafores with the eggs."

"When we got home again, we found the Easter Hare had been there too; so
we were finely spoilt that year," said Gretel.

* * * * *

Several weeks before Easter this year, before Patsie came to stay with
them, Gretel and Barbara went