Then they decided to send
the highest Soprano Singer in the church choir to the Wise Woman; she
could sing up to G-sharp just as easy as not. So the high-Soprano
Singer set out for the Wise Woman's in the Mayor's coach, and the
Aldermen marched behind, swinging their gold-headed canes.
The high-Soprano Singer put her head down close to the Wise Woman's
ear, and sang all about the Christmas Masquerade, and the dreadful
dilemma everybody was in, in G-sharp--she even went higher,
sometimes--and the Wise Woman heard every word. She nodded three
times, and every time she nodded she looked wiser.
"Go home, and give 'em a spoonful of castor-oil, all 'round," she
piped up; then she took a pinch of snuff, and wouldn't say any more.
So the Aldermen went home, and each one took a district and marched
through it, with a servant carrying an immense bowl and spoon, and
every child had to take a dose of castor-oil.
But it didn't do a bit of good. The children cried and struggled when
they were forced to take the castor-oil; but, two minutes afterward,
the chimney-sweeps were crying for their brooms, and the princesses
screaming because they couldn't go to court, and the Mayor's daughter,
who had been given a double dose, cried louder and more sturdily: "I
want to go and tend my geese! I will go and tend my geese!"
So the Aldermen took the high-Soprano Singer, and they consulted the
Wise Woman again.
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