I was just beginning to say `I'm afraid I don't know the words', when Sylvie silently turned the map over, and I found the words were all written on the back. In one respect it was a very peculiar song: the chorus to each verse came in the middle, instead of at the end of it. However, the tune was so easy that I soon picked it up, and managed the chorus as well, perhaps, as it is possible for one person to manage such a thing. It was in vain that I signed to Sylvie to help me: she only smiled sweetly and shook her head.

`King Fisher courted Lady Bird--
Sing Beans, sing Bones, sing Butterflies!
   "Find me my match," he said,
"With such a noble head--
With such a beard, as white as curd--
   With such expressive eyes!"

`"Yet pins have heads," said Lady Bird--
Sing Prunes, sing Prawns, sing Primrose-Hill!
   "And, where you stick them in,
   They stay, and thus a pin
Is very much to be preferred
   To one that's never still!"

`"Oysters have beards," said Lady Bird--
Sing Flies, sing Frogs, sing Fiddle-strings!
   "I love them, for I know
   They never chatter so:
They would not say one single word--
   Not if you crowned them Kings!"

`"Needles have eyes," said Lady Bird--
Sing Cats, sing Corks, sing Cowslip-tea!
   "And they are sharp--just what
   Your Majesty is not:
So get you gone--' tis too absurd
   To come a-courting me!"'

`So he went away,' Bruno added as a kind of postscript, when the last note of the song had died away, `Just like he always did.'

`Oh, my dear Bruno!' Sylvie exclaimed, with her hands over her ears. `You shouldn't say "like": you should say "what".'

To which Bruno replied, doggedly, `I only says "what!" when oo doosn't speak loud, so as I can hear oo.'

`Where did he go to?' I asked, hoping to prevent an argument.

`He went more far than he'd never been before,' said Bruno.

`You should never say "more far",' Sylvie corrected him: `you should say "farther".'

`Then oo shouldn't say "more broth", when we're at dinner,' Bruno retorted: `oo should say "brother"!'

This time Sylvie evaded an argument by turning away, and beginning to roll up the Map. `Lessons are over!' she proclaimed in her sweetest tones.

`And has there been no crying over them?' I enquired. `Little boys always cry over their lessons, don't they?'

`I never cries after twelve o'clock,' said Bruno: `'cause then it's getting so near to dinner-time.'

`Sometimes, in the morning,' Sylvie said in a low voice; `when it's Geography-day, and when he's been disobe--'

`What a fellow you are to talk, Sylvie!' Bruno hastily interposed. `Doos oo think the world was made for oo to talk in?'

`Why, where would you have me talk, then?' Sylvie said, evidently quite ready for an argument.

But Bruno answered resolutely. `I'm not going to argue about it, `cause it's getting late, and there wo'n't be time--but oo's as 'ong as everoo can be!' And he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, in which tears were beginning to glitter.

Sylvie's eyes filled with tears in a moment. `I didn't mean it, Bruno, darling!' she whispered; and the rest of the argument was lost `amid the tangles of Neæra's hair', while the two disputants hugged and kissed each other.