It's dance like a fairy and sing like a bird,
Sing like a bird in June!
Anybody who has not seen this done by a solemn-looking girl of five feet seven or so, who divests a naturally humorous mouth of any expression whatever, and lands on the floor like an inspired steam-roller, is not in a position to judge of the comic quality of the performance.
Nan, with much coy reluctance and very Gallic gestures, rendered what was pessimistically called her "naughty little French song." Its burden was not discoverably pernicious, however, consisting of the question, "O Jean Baptiste, pourquoi?" occasionally varied by the rapturous answer, "O Jean Baptiste, voilà!" But there was accent enough to make anything naughty, and she looked so pretty they made her do it again.
Lucilla resisted many appeals, but succumbed finally to the Amiable Parent, who could wheedle the gate off its hinges, according to his daughter, and delivered her "one and only stunt." She had performed it steadily since freshman year, always with the same wild success, never with a hint of its palling. Marjory wondered why they laughed so—they all knew it by heart—and asked if anybody else never did it; their amazed negative impressed her greatly. She stood before them slim and straight, this daughter of a hundred Bostonians, a little cold, a little bored, a little displeased, apparently, and with an utterly emotionless voice and a quite impersonal manner delivered the most senseless doggerel in the most delicately precise enunciation:
Baby sat on the window ledge,
Mary pushed her over the edge.
Baby broke into bits so airy—
Mother shook her finger at Mary.
Sarah poisoned mother's tea,