“That’s quite perfect,” said Sylvie. “Now you may sing the Kingfisher Song.”
“Will oo sing the chorus?” Bruno said to me.
I was just beginning to say “I’m afraid I don’t know the words,” when Sylvie silently turned the map over, and I found the words were all written on the back. In one respect it was a very peculiar song: the chorus to each verse came in the middle, instead of at the end of it. However, the tune was so easy that I soon picked it up, and managed the chorus as well, perhaps, as it is possible for one person to manage such a thing. It was in vain that I signed to Sylvie to help me: she only smiled sweetly and shook her head.
“King Fisher courted Lady Bird—
Sing Beans, sing Bones, sing Butterflies!
‘Find me my match,’ he said,
‘With such a noble head—
With such a beard, as white as curd—
With such expressive eyes!’“ ‘Yet pins have heads,’ said Lady Bird—
Sing Prunes, sing Prawns, sing Primrose-Hill!
‘And, where you stick them in,
They stay, and thus a pin
Is very much to be preferred
To one that’s never still!’“ ‘Oysters have beards,’ said Lady Bird—
Sing Flies, sing Frogs, sing Fiddle-strings!
‘I love them, for I know
They never chatter so:
They would not say one single word—
Not if you crowned them Kings!’“ ‘Needles have eyes,’ said Lady Bird—
Sing Cats, sing Corks, sing Cowslip-tea!
‘And they are sharp—just what
Your Majesty is not:
So get you gone—’tis too absurd
To come a-courting me!’ ”
“So he went away,” Bruno added as a kind of postscript, when the last note of the song had died away. “Just like he always did.”
“Oh, my dear Bruno!” Sylvie exclaimed, with her hands over her ears. “You shouldn’t say ‘like’: you should say ‘what.’ ”
To which Bruno replied, doggedly, “I only says ‘what!’ when oo doosn’t speak loud, so as I can hear oo.”
“Where did he go to?” I asked, hoping to prevent an argument.
“He went more far than he’d never been before,” said Bruno.
“You should never say ‘more far,’ ” Sylvie corrected him: “you should say ‘farther.’ ”
“Then oo shouldn’t say ‘more broth,’ when we’re at dinner,” Bruno retorted: “oo should say ‘brother’!”
This time Sylvie evaded an argument by turning away, and beginning to roll up the Map. “Lessons are over!” she proclaimed in her sweetest tones.
“And has there been no crying over them?” I enquired. “Little boys always cry over their lessons, don’t they?”
“I never cries after twelve o’clock,” said Bruno: “ ’cause then it’s getting so near to dinnertime.”
“Sometimes, in the morning,” Sylvie said in a low voice; “when it’s Geography-day, and when he’s been disobe—”
“What a fellow you are to talk, Sylvie!” Bruno hastily interposed. “Doos oo think the world was made for oo to talk in?”
“Why, where would you have me talk, then?” Sylvie said, evidently quite ready for an argument.
But Bruno answered resolutely. “I’m not going to argue about it, ’cause it’s getting late, and there won’t be time—but oo’s as ’ong as ever oo can be!” And he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, in which tears were beginning to glitter.
Sylvie’s eyes filled with tears in a moment. “I didn’t mean it, Bruno, darling!” she whispered; and the rest of the argument was lost “amid the tangles of Neaera’s hair,” while the two disputants hugged and kissed each other.
But this new form of argument was brought to a sudden end by a flash of lightning, which was closely followed by a peal of thunder, and by a torrent of raindrops, which came hissing and spitting, almost like live creatures, through the leaves of the tree that sheltered us.
“Why, it’s raining cats and dogs!” I said.
“And all the dogs has come down first,” said Bruno: “there’s nothing but cats coming down now!”
In another minute the pattering ceased, as suddenly as it had begun. I stepped out from under the tree, and found that the storm was over; but I looked in vain, on my return, for my tiny companions. They had vanished with the storm, and there was nothing for it but to make the best of my way home.
On the table lay, awaiting my return, an envelope of that peculiar yellow tint which always announces a telegram, and which must be, in the memories of so many of us, inseparably linked with some great and sudden sorrow—something that has cast a shadow, never in this world to be wholly lifted off, on the brightness of Life. No doubt it has also heralded—for many of us—some sudden news of joy; but this, I think, is less common: human life seems, on the whole, to contain more of sorrow than of joy. And yet the world goes on. Who knows why?
This time, however, there was no shock of sorrow to be faced: in fact, the few words it contained (“Could not bring myself to write. Come soon. Always welcome. A letter follows this. Arthur.”) seemed so like Arthur himself speaking, that it gave me quite a thrill of pleasure, and I at once began the preparations needed for the journey.
II
Love’s Curfew
“Fayfield Junction! Change for Elveston!”
What subtle memory could there be, linked to these commonplace words, that caused such a flood of happy thoughts to fill my brain? I dismounted from the carriage in a state of joyful excitement for which I could not at first account. True, I had taken this very journey, and at the same hour of the day, six months ago; but many things had happened since then, and an old man’s memory has but a slender hold on recent events: I sought “the missing link” in vain. Suddenly I caught sight of a bench—the only one provided on the cheerless platform—with a lady seated on it, and the whole forgotten scene flashed upon me as vividly as if
