"

"And there's one song you sometimes play that makes me feel floating on
and on like a great white swan."

She hummed a few bars of the _Gondel-Lied_--flawlessly.

"Dear me! you have an ear!" he said, pinching it. "And how did you
like what I was playing just now?" he went on, growing curious to know
how his own improvisations struck her.

"Oh, I liked it so much," she whispered enthusiastically, "because it
reminded me of my favourite one--every moment I did think--I
thought--you were going to come into that."

The whimsical sparkle leapt into his eyes.

"And I thought I was so original," he murmured.

"But what I liked best," she began, then checked herself, as if
suddenly remembering she had never made a spontaneous remark before,
and lacking courage to establish a precedent.

"Yes--what you liked best?" he said encouragingly.

"That song you sang this afternoon," she said shyly.

"What song? I sang no song," he said, puzzled for a moment.

"Oh yes! That one about--

'Kiss me, dear love, good-night.'

I was going upstairs, but it made me stop just here--and cry."

He made his comic grimace.

"So it was you Beethoven was barking at! And I thought he had an ear!
And I thought you had an ear! But no! You're both Philistines, after
all. Heigho!"

She looked sad. "Oughtn't I to ha' liked it?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh yes," he said reassuringly, "it's very popular. No drawing-room is
without it."

She detected the ironic ring in his voice. "It wasn't so much the
music," she began apologetically.

"Now--now you're going to spoil yourself," he said. "Be natural."

"But it wasn't," she protested. "It was the words----"

"That's worse," he murmured below his breath.

"They reminded me of my mother as she laid dying."

"Ah!" said Lancelot.

"Yes, sir, mother was a long time dying--it was when I was a little
girl, and I used to nurse her--I fancy it was our little Sally's death
that killed her; she took to her bed after the funeral, and never left
it till she went to her own," said Mary Ann, with unconscious
flippancy. "She used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was
going to little Sally, and I remember I was such a silly then, I
brought mother flowers and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally
with my love. I put them on her pillow, but the flowers faded and the
cake got mouldy--mother was such a long time dying--and at last I ate
the apples myself, I was so tired of