"No, I don't expect I should," laughed Dan derisively. "Not the way you would pronounce it, at least."
"Stop teasing her, Dan," cried Kitty. "We all of us have to think.
Let us take it in turns. Now then, you begin."
For a moment Dan looked somewhat taken aback, then memory came suddenly to him.
"'Who killed Cock Robin?
"I," said the Spar—'"
"That is not right," said Betty; "you are not beginning at the beginning; you are missing out half."
"Of course, as if I didn't know that," retorted Dan, but he looked rather foolish; "but we are only here for the day, after all, and I am not going to spend it all in saying nursery rhymes. If we were going to stay a week it would be different."
"That's all very well, but I believe you don't know it," said Betty softly but decisively.
Whereupon Dan in great wrath burst forth,—
"'It was on a merry time
When Jenny Wren was young,'" etc., etc.
When he had chanted three verses, they begged him to stop. When he had reached the twelfth they all went on their knees to him and implored him to stop; but no, on he went, and on and on to the very last line. "Next time," he said, turning to Betty when he had reached the end, "I hope you will believe me."