It annoys you when he sits there with his eyes on you, smiling when you smile, frowning when you frown, talking about the weather when you talk about the weather, and when you whistle "Nancy Lee" whistling his everlasting "Grandfather's Clock." It is a relief, by the way, even to hear him whistle a different tune, for it is about the only thing in which he does take an independent course.
But, if truth were known, it would come out he only knows this one tune, and that is the reason.

He has not originality enough in him to learn a second.
It _is_ an annoying thing to be copied and imitated by any one, most of all by a fellow one's own age.

We can understand the little child imitating its father, and we enjoy seeing what capers it sometimes cuts in the attempt, but there's nothing either interesting or amusing in the way Ebenezer goes on.

When, for instance, by a sudden inspiration of genius, you take it into your head to shy a slice of apple across the room at Jack Sleepy just while he is in the act of yawning, with his mouth open wide enough to let a wheelbarrow down, it is not pleasant that immediately afterwards some one at your side should hurl a walnut at the same person and wound him seriously in the eye.

Besides making a row, it takes away from the fun of your achievement, and makes the whole affair more than a joke.