"Well now, no more daftness," said Robin. "This first verse has got to be learnt by heart before we can tackle the second. All together, boys:
"'Hail, Merry Men, ye Merry Men——'
"No good! You're flat, the lot of you. What we need is the schoolroom piano. Any stout bowmen willing to fetch it out? Marry, speak not all at once! Tinker, hast thou brought with thee thy sweet-stringed lute?"
"I've got my mouth-organ, Robin," said he who answered to the name of Tinker, while knowing himself to be, on the school register, plain Tom Jaye.
"Good for thee, Tinker. And hast thou, Miller, concealed within thy suit of Lincoln green, a mellow flute?"
"I'm never without my tin-whistle, Robin," responded Alf Agers, pulling the instrument proudly from his pocket.
"Then, my stout Merry Men, ye shall blow your hardest on these instruments of torture—I mean on the mellow flute and lute, while we troll our jovial ditty under the greenwood tree."
Robin very much enjoyed talking in old English fashion, and had secretly spent a lot of time in reading up the correct phrases to use. Often he would forget himself and mix his old-fashioned speech with the plainest of modern language, but it all came alike to his loyal followers, who were, as a rule, too happy to be critical.
Buoyed up by the strains of the mouth-organ and the whistle, they made bolder onslaughts on the opening chorus, warbling it more and more to its author's liking each time.
"Now, good my men, the next verse, I beg of ye. It runs thus wise: