MAY 18: Mother Sheep
“My beautiful baby, Laura Lamb,” said Mother Sheep, “we always follow the leader. We’re gentle and we’re quiet. We’re rather timid, too. We don’t think a great deal for ourselves.
“They say,” Mother Sheep continued, “that when people cannot sleep they make believe they are seeing sheep, and that they are counting them going through a gate. That is because sheep follow each other, and if one were going through a gate the others would be going through, too.
“Oh, they get tired, you see, of counting the sheep they make believe that they see! And so they go to sleep!
“And you see what a help we are to people when we do such things, so that they can see us in their minds going through a gate—one after the other.
“You see, my Laura Lamb, if sheep should go different ways then people couldn’t be helped toward sleep by us, and it is nice to think of helping people to sleep, for we’re gentle, kind souls, and it is nice to help.
“So, Laura Lamb, you, too, always follow the leader. Don’t go through one gate yourself and have your cousins going through another and some other cousins through the opening in the fence and the others perhaps going under the fence.
“We must all go together, we sheep.”
And Laura Lamb bleated and said: “Ba-aaa-baa-aaa, Mother Sheep! I will do as you say.”