"Drownded," said Johnnie. Though how and where he could not tell, and did not even know his father's name, which Cis felt sure was not Smith.
"I thought as much!" remarked their visitor, wisely. "And what about your Paw and Maw?" he inquired of Cis, who knew names and dates and facts about her parents, but was completely in the dark as to the whereabouts of any living kinspeople. She had lived in a flat in the next block till her father died. When her mother married Tom Barber, she had moved out of her birthplace and into the area building. And that was all there was to tell, except that her own full name was Narcissa Amy Way.
"Cute!" declared One-Eye, going a beet-red.
"Have you got a mother?" asked Cis.
"Both dead," answered One-Eye, knowing that the two would understand what he meant.
"Three orphans," returned Cis. The blue eyes misted, and the pointed, pink chin quivered. And the others knew what she meant.
Indeed, at the sight of her brimming eyes One-Eye felt so keenly that, without warning, he put his head back in a most surprising fashion, opened his mouth, shut that one eye, and broke into a strange plaint. The others concluded that One-Eye was making a curious, hoarse noise ceilingward for some reason. Presently, however, Cis made out that the noise was a tune: a tune weird but soul-stirring. Music, as Cis could see, was One-Eye's medium of expressing his emotions. And then and there it became her firm conviction that he was bearing a great and secret sorrow.
It was Johnnie who first learned the words of the tune. And when he could repeat them to Cis, both realized how appropriate they had been under the circumstances, for they ran:
"Oh, blame me not for weepin',
Oh, blame me not, I say!
For I have a' angel mother,
Ten thousand miles away!"
Having got to the end of a verse, One-Eye sat up, smiled feebly, darted a bashful glance at Cis, and went on with his questions. "What was Uncle Albert's name?" he wanted to know.
