The Bride sent her love.
Ann Woltor remembered the table napkin.
Allan John watched the proceedings without comment.
It was Rollins who insisted on serving the May Girl's supper. "It was his right," he said. More than this he also insisted on gathering up all his own supper on one quite inadequate plate, and trotting back to the library to eat it with the May Girl. This also was his right, he said. Truly he looked very funny there all huddled up on a low stool by the May Girl's side. But at least he showed sense enough now not to babble very much. And once, at least, without reproof I saw him reach up to the May Girl's fork and plate and urge some particularly nourishing morsel of food into her languidly astonished mouth.
It was just as everybody drifted back from the dining-room into the library that the May Girl wriggled her long, silken, childish legs out of the steamer-rug that encompassed her, struggled to her feet, wandered somewhat aimlessly to the piano, fingered the keys for a single indefinite moment and burst ecstatically into song!
None of us, except my Husband, had heard her sing before. None of us indeed, except my Husband and myself, knew even that she could sing. The proof that she could smote suddenly across the ridge of one's spine like the prickle of a mild electric shock.
My Husband was perfectly right. It was a typical "Boy Soprano" voice, a chorister's voice—clear as flame— passionless as syrup. As devoid of ritual as the multiplication table it would have made the multiplication table fairly reek with incense and Easter lilies! Absolutely lacking in everything that the tone sharks call "color"—yet it set your mind a-haunt with all the sad crimson and purple splendors of memorial windows! Shadows were back of it! And sorrows! And mysteries! Bridals! And deaths! The prattle alike of the very young and the very old! Carol! And Threnody! And a fearful Transiency as of youth itself passing!
She sang—
"There is a Green Hill far away
Without a city wall,