Naughty Nené [antikvár]

I wonder if there is another little girl like Nené! A wise old man says that all little girls are like Nené. Nené would rather play house or store, or make sweets with her dolls, than recite the three and four tables for the teacher who comes to give her lessons. Because Nené has no mother; her mother is dead, and that is why Nené has a teacher. Making sweets is what Nené likes to do more than anything else; I wonder why. Who knows?perhaps because to play making sweets they give her real sugar. Of course the sweets never turn out well the first timethey are very difficult to make- so she always has to ask for sugar twice. Since everyone knows that Nené never likes to make her little friends work hard, when she plays at taking a drive or going shopping or visiting, she always calls them; but when she is going to make sweets, never. And once a very strange thing happened to Nené; she asked her papá for two cents to buy a new pencil, but on the way to the store she forgot all about the pencil; what she bought was a strawberry meringue. Her little friends found out about this, of course, and so from then on they called her "Strawberry Meringue" instead of Nené.Nené's father loved her very much. They say he did poor work if he failed to see his little daughter in the morning. He called her "little daughter," not Nené. When her papá returned from work she always went out to greet him with open arms, like a little bird opening its wings to fly; then her papá would pluck her from the ground the way you pluck a rose from a rose bush. She would look at him most fondly as if to ask him things, and he would look at her sadly as if he wanted to burst into tears. But he would turn happy right away, lift Nené onto his shoulders, and both would go into the house singing the national anthem. Nené's papá always usedto bring home some new book and let hersee if there were pictures in it; she especially liked some books he brought that had pictures of. stars in them, each with its own name and color. The red star and the yellow star and the blue star each had names, and she read that light is made up of seven colors, and that the stars go through the sky the way little girls go through a garden. No, not quite; for little girls go through a garden helter-skelter like a flower petal blown by the wind, while the stars go through the sky always following the same path and not wherever they wish. Who knows,