“’To see a robin in a cage
    Puts all heaven in a rage,’”

quoted Kitty dreamily.

Anna looked quite shocked.  “O Kitty,” she said, “how can you?  You are quite profane.”

Kitty laughed.  “Am I?” she said.  “What a dreadful word to use!  I didn’t mean to be.  I didn’t make up those lines, you know.  Oh, don’t you think,” she went on eagerly, “it would be a nice game to try how many different verses about robins we can remember?”

“Do you mean nursery verses and all?” asked Dan.  Kitty nodded; her brain was already busy.

“I think it will be lovely,” said Betty.  “I know quite a lot.”

“Go ahead then,” urged Dan, “and remember to give author and book.”

“Nursery verses and nursery rhymes haven’t got any author,” said Betty with a very superior air.

Dan was on the alert at once; he loved to torment Betty.

“No author!  Oh! oh! what an appalling display of childish ignorance,” he cried in pretended horror, “and after all the trouble I have taken with you too.  My dear child, don’t you know that some one must have composed them or they wouldn’t be—­but there, I suppose little children can’t be expected to understand these things.”

“But I do,” cried Betty indignantly.  “You don’t know all I know.  I know a great deal more than you think, though you may not think so.”

“Dear me!  Do you really now?” said Dan, pretending to be enormously impressed.  “What a genius we may have in the family without our ever suspecting it.  Tell us who wrote: 

   “’And when they were dead,
    The robins so red
    Took strawberry leaves and over them spread,’”

“What would be the good?” said Betty, with a sigh as if of hopeless despair.  “You wouldn’t reckernize the name if I told you.”

“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.”