"That's silly! A bush has got nothing to do with a beard."
"Yes, it has," said Eva nodding her head, "birds build in bushes and they build in beards."
Jack fairly screamed with laughter. "Who's stuffed you up with that nonsense?"
"It's not nonsense," said Eva, almost in tears. "It's in a book mummy gave me, and there's a picture of the man and a verse about him too, so it must be true. Mummy teached me the verse."
"Say it, then," said Jack, mockingly, and Eva folded her arms behind her plump little person, knitting her brows in the effort to quicken memory.
"There was an old man with a beard,
Who said 'It's just as I feared,
Two owls and a wren, four larks and a hen
Have all built their nests in my beard.'
"THERE!"
Only capital letters could express the triumph of the final exclamation, but Jack laughed louder and longer than ever.
"But it isn't true," he said.
"O' course it's true. It's in a book, and there's the picture. Mummy shall show you," reiterated Eva, stamping her foot.