“I don’t sing ‘Ah.’ I sing ‘Hoo-Wooooo-wooooo!’”
“That is certainly a loony method,” remarked the Donkey.
“It suits me,” returned the other; and he nudged the Owl. “Come, suppose you give us a song.”
“Oh, la! I haven’t sung for years,” tittered the Owl.
“Nonsense!” Spoke up the rabbit. “I heard you only last week. Give us I can not sing the owl songs I sung long years ago.”
“But if he can’t sing them there’s no sense in his trying,” said the Donkey. “My ear is so sensitive,” he added, in the ear of the Great Huge Bear, “that an untrained voice grates on it fearfully.”
“What’s the row?” asked the Great Huge Bear, sleepily. And as nobody told him he dozed off again.
“Suppose we hear from Just Buddie,” said the Middle Bear. She spoke but seldom, and always to some purpose.
The suggestion met with entire favor, and again Buddie was much embarrassed. As before, everybody stopped talking and turned his eyes upon her. Even the Great Huge Bear, when awakened and informed that Just Buddie was going to sing, appeared greatly interested.
Now you, Little One, who go to kindergarten and learn so many pretty songs, will be surprised to hear that Buddie did not know a single song she could sing “in company.” Music was almost unknown in the log house by the lake. Indeed, she had heard more songs this very day than ever she had heard before; but these, even, were so jumbled up in her mind that, with the possible exception of Sammy Patch, she could not remember two successive lines of any one of them; and even if she had been able to remember them, they had been sung once, and the company wanted something new. Suddenly she thought of the Yellow Dog’s song, Nobody Knows. Perhaps they hadn’t heard that.