“Oh, never mind about reading it now,” said Faith, whose previous acquaintance with Di’s verses was not encouraging as to the results of their declamation, “don’t read them now, Phil.”
Phil turned a deaf ear. Scrambling up the nearest tree, he perched himself astride one of the branches best adapted for his purpose, and then proceeded to declaim:
“Will you buzz behind my coffin?”
Begged a butterfly, “dear bee;
For that insect-butcher, Andrew,
Will soon have slaughtered me.
No more upon my painted wings
My slender form will soar,
And, midst the flowers in sunny hours,
You’ll never see me more.”
“Oh! cruel is the havoc made
By Andrew’s net and pin;
There’s no one left to mourn me now,
Of all my kith and kin.
’Twas only yesterday I found
A widowed moth in tears,
‘My husband’s corpse lies stretched,’ she sobbed,
‘On one of his cork biers.’
Then will you buzz behind my coffin?”
Once more he asked the bee,
“Right gladly,” quoth that insect,
“If you’re sure he won’t kill me.”
“And now, gentlemen and ladies, you’ll kindly join in the chorus,” said Phil, “I’ll lead it.”
“Then down with Butcher Andrew!”
Hark, all the insects cry,
“Let him be caught, and pinned on cork,”
Moans every butterfly.
And the chorus was taken up with such goodwill, and so much noise, that every owl within a radius of at least a mile must have been startled from his afternoon’s nap, whilst old widow Pugsley, who was a proverb for deafness, paused in her hay-tossing to remark that “Mussa Busson had a rare lot of merry youngsters down yonder in the Cuckoo-copse.”
CHAPTER VII.
COMING TO BLOWS.
UNFORTUNATELY, they were not all having a song together down in that shady copse.
Faith had, indeed, been coerced into joining the chorus; with Jack shouting it into one ear, and Di shrieking into the other, it would have been vain to resist, but Andrew was as dumb as a fish.