"Rockaby, lullaby, bees in the clover...." sang Nurse Elliot, of the American Red Cross, rocking the cradle with her foot and looking dreamily out of the window. From where she sat she could catch a glimpse of the Bomal church steeple and the swaying tops of the trees in the cemetery.
"Perhaps this poor lamb would be better off if it were already asleep over there under those trees," reflected Nurse Caroline Elliot. And as if in assent, the infant in the cradle uttered a melancholy wail.
Nurse Elliot immediately began to sing Bliss Carman's May-song:
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
All the world is fair again,
Fair and kind to me.
Day comes, May comes,
One who was away comes,
Set his place at hearth and board
As it used to be.
May comes, day comes,
One who was away comes,
Higher are the hills of home,
Bluer is the sea.
The baby soon gave up all attempt to compete with the powerful American contralto, and with puckered brow and tiny clenched fist went mournfully to sleep again. He had been in the world just seven days and had not found much to rejoice over. Life seemed to consist of a good deal of noise and discomfort and bumping about. There seemed to be not much food, a great deal of singing, and a variety of aches. "I wish I were back in the land of Neverness," wept the baby, "lying in the cup of a lotus-flower in the blue morning of inexistence."
The stork, still standing on one leg on the roof resting from its journey, heard this and said: "Never mind. Cheer up. It is not for long."
"For how long is it?" asked the baby anxiously.
"Oh, less than a hundred years," said the stork, combing the feathers of its breast with its beak.