“Be sure you do, then. Lyn! Come here to me.”
“Don’t shoot, colonel, I’ll come down,” said Lyn.
Her small face was downcast and demure. Charlie See came tiptoe after her and sidled furtively to the fire.
“Sing, then,” commanded Hobby. He brought the guitars and gave one to each girl.
The coals glowed on the hearth; side by side, the fair head and the brown bent at the task of tuning. That laughing circle was scattered long ago and it was written that never again should all those friendly faces gather by any hearthfire—never again. It has happened so many, many times; even to you and to me, so many, many times! But we learn nothing; we are still bitter, and hard, and unkind—with kindness so cheap and so priceless—as if there was no such thing as loss or change or death.
And because of some hours of your own, it is hoped you will not smile at the songs of that lost happy hour. They were old-fashioned songs; indeed, it is feared they might almost be called Victorian. Their bourgeois simplicity carried no suggestive double meaning.
“When other lips and other hearts”—that was what they sang, brown Lyn and white Edith. Kirkconnel Lea they sang, and Jeanie Morrison, and Rosamond:
Rose o’ the world, what man would wed
When he might dream of your face instead?
Folly? Perhaps. Perhaps, too, in a world where we can but love and where we must lose, it may be no unwisdom if only love and loss seem worth the singing.
The swift hour passed. The last song, even as the first, was poignant with the happy sadness of youth: