"Then the other day, when her father was here, I noticed that he had a new name for her. He called her that several times, and when he went away, he said it in a tone that seemed to mean so much, 'Good-bye, my little Hildegarde!'"
Phil looked from the pictures on the table to the original, standing in the kitchen wielding a rolling-pin under Mrs. Ware's direction. The morning sun, streaming through the window, was making a halo of her hair. Somehow he found this last view the most pleasing. He said nothing, however, only thrummed idly on the table, and hummed an old song that had been running through his head all morning.
"What's that you're humming?" asked Joyce, when she had worked on in silence several minutes.
Phil came to himself with a start. "I'm sure I don't know," he laughed. "I wasn't conscious that I was making even an attempt to sing."
"It went this way," said Joyce, whistling the refrain, softly. "It's so sweet."
"Oh, that," said Phil, recognizing the air. "That's a song that Elsie's old English nurse used to sing her to sleep with.
"'Maid Elsie roams by lane and lea,
Her heart beats low and sad.'
She liked it because it had her name in it, and I liked it because of the jingle of the chorus. It always seemed full of bells to me." He hummed it lightly:
"'Kling, lang ling,
She seems to hear her bride-bells ring,
Her bonny bride-bells ring.'
It must have been these bridal musicale programmes that brought it up to me, for I haven't thought of it in years."