nothin' come acrost his mine
But Dandy Jim from Caroline!"

Bobby shut his eyes tight, and threw his head back and sang through his
nose, as he had seen big folks do. He put the whole of his little soul
into these impressive words. When he had finished and opened his eyes to
discover what effect his vocal exertions had produced, his audience was
of course fast asleep.

"Well, I never!" said Bob.

"The tune's too awful lively," said the little old woman, when she woke
up. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Now, hear me sing." And she
began, in a slow, solemn movement, the most drawling tune you ever heard,
and they all joined in the same fashion:

"Poor old Pidy,
She died last Friday:
Poor old creetur,
The turkey-buzzards----"

But before they could finish the line, while they were yet hanging to the
tails of the turkey-buzzards, so to speak, Bobby burst out with:

"La! that'th the toon the old cow died on. I wouldn't thing that."

"You wouldn't, hey?" said the woman, getting angry.

"No, I wouldn't, little dumplin'."

Whereupon the little woman got so furious that she Went fast asleep, and
the reader, growing interested and falling into a doze, tumbled off his
chair on his head, but as his head was quite soft and puttyish, it did
him no particular harm, except that the fall made him sleep more soundly
than ever.

When they had waked up again, Bobby thought it time to move on, but as
soon as he offered to move, the Sleepy-heads surrounded him and began to
sing a drawling song, which made Bobby sleepy. He soon found that they
meant to make him one of themselves, and this was not at all to his
taste. He struggled to get away, but something held him about the feet.
What should he do?

Suddenly a bright thought came to his relief. The Sleepy-heads were now
all standing in a ring around him. He began to tell a story at the top of
his voice:

"My gran'pappy, he fit weth a red Injun. An' the Injun he chopped my
gran'pappy's finger off weth his tomahawk, and----"

But at this point all the little people got intensely excited over
Bobby's gran'pappy's fight, and so, of course, fell asleep and fell
forward into a pile on top of Bobby, who had an awful time getting out
from under the heap. Just as he emerged, the people began to wake up and
to lay hold of his feet, but Bobby screamed out:

"And my gran'pappy, he up weth his hatchet and he split the nasty ole red
Injun's head open----"

T