“Come here and learn your Primer,” the teacher said, and Harriet’s curly head bent over the little book as she spelled out the words,
“The cat doth play,
And after slay.”
“You see the picture?” Her teacher pointed out the right one in its little square on the page, a wood-cut of the feline musician with fiddle in hand. Here Henry crowded forward to see, too, and, finding some great joke in the matter, he nudged and coughed and could not be made to stand still. The Dame continued:
“’Tis youth’s delight
To fly their kite—”
a self-evident truth not needing proof. The next item is more learned.
“Whales in the sea
God’s voice obey—”
she pronounced “sea” as “say,” as was the custom in those days;