s the
rest?"

"Marley, Elsie Pritchard Marley. But at home they called me Elsie
Pritchard, because I am--all Pritchard."

Unacquainted with the Pritchard distinction, Elsie Moss was not
impressed. But she exclaimed gleefully over the real surname.

"Elsie Marley!" she cried. "Why, isn't that funny, and oh, isn't it
dear! Elsie Marley, honey!"

The other girl looked blank.

"Of course you know the song, or at least the rhyme?"

"Song? Rhyme?"

"Why, yes. You must have heard it: 'And Do You Ken Elsie Marley,
Honey?'"

"Is it really and truly Elsie Marley?" queried the pale Elsie speaking
for the first time like a real girl, though she had no girlish
vocabulary from which to draw.

"Sure," asserted the other, delighted to be able to surprise her
seatmate. And she sang a stanza in the sweetest voice Elsie Marley had
ever heard, though she had heard good music all her life, and famous
singers.

"Do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?
The wife who sells the barley, honey?
She won't get up to serve her swine,
And do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?"

"Is there--any more?" demanded Elsie Marley almost eagerly.

"One more, and then you just repeat the first. I've known it all my
life. Mother used to sing it to me when I was a baby. Then a few
years ago when I first went to see vaudeville, I 'got it up,' as they
say, with dancing and a little acting. I used to spring it on people
that came to the house. Dad liked it, but it made my stepmother feel
bad--dad said because I was too professional."

She sighed deeply.

"Sing the rest, please, Elsie?" asked the other, using her name for the
first time.

"I will if you'll let me call you Elsie-Honey? You see it really
belongs."

Elsie knew that it was silly, but she found herself quite willing. She
seemed under a strange spell.

"Only," she added, with a stronger sensation of discomfort, "after
to-morrow it isn't likely we'll ever see one another again."

"Oh, yes we will, sure. Why, we just _must_--at least if you want to
half as much as I do, Elsie-Honey?"

"I do," Elsie confessed shyly and now with a curiously pleasant
feeling. "And now, Elsie, please sing the other stanzas."

"It sounds just dear to say _stanzas_," cried the other. "I should
always say _verses_, even if I didn't forget which was which."

With an absurd little flourish of her hands, she turned slightly in her
seat. The dimples came out strongly, and though she sat quite