, and she would
have a perfectly valid excuse to give them for his non-appearance. Not
that he had any illusions as to anybody there missing him at all.

He heard Mark's little voice sound shrilly from the pantry, "Come on,
Elly. It's all right. I've even putten away the book that's got that
song."

Some splendid, surging shouts from the piano and the voices began on
"The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Neale could hear Mr. Welles' shaky
old bass booming away this time. He was probably sitting down with Paul
on his knees. It was really nice of the old codger to take such a fancy
to Paul, and be able to see those sterling qualities of his, through
Paul's surface unloveliness that came mostly from his slowness of
imagination.

The voices stopped; Elly said, "That song sounds as if it were proud of
itself." Her father's heart melted in the utter prostration of
tenderness he felt for his little daughter. How like Elly! What a quick
intelligence animated the sensitive, touching, appealing, defenseless
darling that Elly was! Marise must have been a little girl like that.
Think of her growing up in such an atmosphere of disunion and
flightiness as that weak mother of hers must have given her. Queer, how
Marise didn't seem to have a trace of that weakness, unless it was that
funny physical impressionableness of hers, that she could laugh at
herself, but that still wrought on her, so that if measles were going
the rounds, she could see symptoms of measles in everything the children
did or didn't do; or that well-known habit of hers, that even the
children laughed about with her, of feeling things crawling all over her
for hours after she had seen a caterpillar. Well, that was only the
other side of her extraordinary sensitiveness, that made her know how
everybody was feeling, and what to do to make him feel better. She had
often said that she would certainly die if she ever tried to study
medicine, because as fast as she read of a symptom she would have it,
herself. But she wouldn't die. She'd live and make a cracker-jack of a
doctor, if she'd ever tried it, enough sight better than some callous
brute of a boy with no imagination.

"One more song before bed-time," announced Marise. "And we'll let Mark
choose. It's his turn."

A long silence, in which Neale amusedly divined Mark torn between his
many favorites. Finally the high sweet little treble, "Well, let's make
it 'Down Among the Dead Men.'"

At which Neale laughed sil