Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno.djvu/243

XV] Rise, oh, rise! The daylight dies:
 * The owls are hooting, ting, ting, ting!

Wake, oh, wake! Beside the lake
 * The elves are fluting, ting, ting, ting!

Welcoming our Fairy King,
 * We sing, sing, sing!"

He sang the first four lines briskly and merrily, making the hare-bells chime in time with the music; but the last two he sang quite slowly and gently, and merely waved the flowers backwards and forwards. Then he left off to explain. "The Fairy-King is Oberon, and he lives across the lake——and sometimes he comes in a little boat——and we go and meet him——and then we sing this song, you know."

"And then you go and dine with him?" I said, mischievously.

"Oo shouldn't talk," Bruno hastily said: "it interrupts the song so."

I said I wouldn't do it again.

"I never talk myself when I'm singing," he went on very gravely: "so oo shouldn't either." Then he tuned the hare-bells once more, and sang:——