"You have a stout little champion there," Gregory remarked.
"I cannot complain of his zeal," she answered significantly, at the same time giving the boy a caress. "Mr. Gregory, this is a rude country ballad, and we are going to sing it in our accustomed way, even though it shock your city ears. Johnny and Susie, you can join in the chorus;" and she sang the following simple October glee:
Katydid, your throat is sore,
You can chirp this fall no more;
Robin red-breast, summer's past,
Did you think 'twould always last?
Fly away to sunny climes,
Lands of oranges and limes;
With the squirrels we shall stay
And put our store of nuts away.
O the spiny chestnut burrs! O the prickly chestnut burrs!
Harsh without, but lined with down,
And full of chestnuts, plump and brown.
Sorry are we for the flowers;
We shall miss our summer bowers;
Still we welcome frosty Jack,
Stealing now from Greenland back.
And the burrs will welcome him;
When he knocks, they'll let him in.
They don't know what Jack's about;
Soon he'll turn the chestnuts out.
O the spiny, etc.—
Turkey gobbler, with your train,
You shall scratch the leaves in vain;
Squirrel, with your whisking tail,
Your sharp eyes shall not avail;
In the crisp and early dawn,
Scampering across the lawn.
We will beat you to the trees,
Come you then whene'er you please.
O the spiny, etc.—
Gregory's expression as she played a simple prelude was one of endurance, but when she began to sing the changes of his face were rapid. First he turned toward her with a look of interest, then of surprise. Miss Eulie could not help watching him, for, though she was well on in life, just such a character had never risen above her horizon. Too gentle to censure, she felt that she had much cause for regret.
At first she was pleased to see that he found the ditty far more to his taste than he had expected. But the rapid alternation from pleased surprise and enjoyment to something like a scowl of despair and almost hate she could not understand. Following his eyes she saw them resting on the boy, who was now eagerly joining in the chorus of the last verse. She was not sufficiently skilled to know that to Gregory's diseased moral nature things most simple and wholesome in themselves were most repugnant. She could not understand that the tripping little song, with its wild-wood life and movement—that the boy singing with the delight of a pure, fresh heart—told him, beyond the power of labored language, how hackneyed and blase he had become, how far and hopelessly he had drifted from the same true childhood.
And Miss Walton, turning suddenly toward him, saw the same dark expression, full of suffering and impotent revolt at his destiny, as he regarded it, and she too was puzzled.
"You do not like our foolish little song," she said.
"I envy that boy, Miss Walton," was his reply.