(Betsy enters. She is a pretty girl. Our guess at her age is—but it is better not to guess. We have in our own experience made several humiliating blunders. Let us say that Betsy is young enough to be a grand-daughter. Plainly she is a pirate by accident, not inheritance, for she is clean and she wears a pretty dress.)

Duke: (as he rises and makes a show of manners). Betsy, yer is welcome ter the parlor. We wants Red Joe ter hear yer sing. That leetle song o' yers.

(He returns to the recess at the rear of the cabin and covertly watches Joe. Patch-Eye is lost in heavenly meditation. Joe's attention is roused before the first stanza of the song is finished. By the third stanza Betsy sings to him alone.)

Betsy's Lullaby

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Betsy: (sings).

The north wind's cheeks are puffed with tunes:
It whistles across the sky.
Its song is shrill and rough, until
The hour of twilight 's nigh.
Rest, my dear one, rest and dream.
The winds on tip-toe keep.
In the dusk of day they hum their lay,
And weary children sleep.
The waves since dawn roared on the rocks:
They snarled at the ships on the deep.
But at twilight hour they chain their power
And little children sleep.
Rest, my dear one, rest and dream.
The ships in a cradle swing,
And sailormen blink and children sink
To sleep, as the wavelets sing.
The sun at noon was red and hot:
It stifled the east and west.
But at even song the shadows long
Have summoned the world to rest.
Rest, my dear one, rest and dream.
The sun runs off from the sky.
But the stars, it 's odd, while children nod,
Are tuned to a lullaby.

(She sings slowly, to a measure that might rock a cradle. This can be managed, for I have tried it with a chair. Once, Patch-Eye blows his nose to keep his emotions from exposure. But make him blow softly—soto naso, shall we say?—so as not to disturb the song. In Red Joe the song seems to have stirred a memory. At the end of each stanza Betsy pauses, as if she, too, dwelt in the past.)

Patch: When I hears that song I feels as if I were rockin' babies in a crib—blessed leetle pirates, pullin' at their bottles, as will foller the sea some day.