Jimmy (Sighing happily): This is the beautiful-est night I ever knew. If you would do just one more thing, it would be lots more beautiful. Will you, Ma Rachel?
Rachel: Well, what, honey?
Jimmy: Will you sing—at the piano, I mean, it’s lots prettier that way—the little song you used to rock me to sleep by? You know, the one about the “Slumber Boat”?
Rachel: Oh! honey, not tonight. You’re too tired. It’s bedtime now.
Jimmy (Patting her face with his little hand; wheedlingly): Please! Ma Rachel, please! pretty please!
Rachel: Well, honey boy, this once, then. Tonight, you shall have the little song—I used to sing you to sleep by (half to herself) perhaps, for the last time.
Jimmy: Why, Ma Rachel, why the last time?
Rachel (Shaking her head sadly, goes to the piano; in a whisper): The last time. (She twists up her hair into a knot at the back of her head and looks at the keys for a few moments; then she plays the accompaniment of the “Slumber Boat” through softly, and, after a moment, sings. Her voice is full of pent-up longing, and heartbreak, and hopelessness. She ends in a little sob, but attempts to cover it by singing, lightly and daintily, the chorus of “The Owl and the Moon.” ... Then softly and with infinite tenderness, almost against her will, she plays and sings again the refrain of the “Slumber Boat”):
“Sail, baby, sail
Out from that sea,