So now he seldom gets through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning.
The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs.
That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry.

Then he will put his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down, as if I were a brother parrot." "Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice.
"I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.
But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart.

"Ah, mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command.

And yet, do you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment, no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!" Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's secret might slip by them irretrievably.

"Oh, monsieur," she cried, fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't decline, I beg of you, on those accounts.