"Never heard it in my life; sing it to us, Farquhar, like a darlin'."
Now, the dominie was not given to singing, but thus adjured, and the road being clear, he sang in a very fair voice:—
We are the flowers,
The fair young flowers
That come with the voice of Spring,
Tra la la, la la la, la la,
Tra la, tra la a a a.
Coristine revelled in the chorus, which, at the "a a a," went up to the extreme higher compass of the human voice and beyond it. He made his friend repeat the performance, called him a daisy, and tra la la'd to his heart's content. Then he sat down on a grassy bank by the wayside and laughed loud and long. "Oh, it's a nice pair of fair young flowers we are, coming with the voice of spring; but we're not hayseeds, anyway." When the lawyer turned himself round to rise, Wilkinson asked seriously, "Did you hurt yourself then, Corry?"
"Never a bit, except that I'm weak with the laughing; and for why?"
"Because there is some red on your trousers, and I thought it might be blood—that you had sat down on some sharp thing."