Then Johannes bethought him for the first time that the two little girls had been speaking in English. Marjon tuned her guitar and gave him a hard poke in the side with the neck of it, because she found him getting so flustered again. Then they sang the song that Johannes had completed that morning, and which Marjon had since put to music.
"Ah, scarlet geranium, blossom true!
Ah, lovely lobelia blue!
Why gaze at me so mournfully?
Why thus bedight,
This morning bright
With glistening tears of dew?
"Ah! is't remembrance of olden days,
When the exquisite nightingale sung?
When the fairies danced, over mossy ways,
In the still moonlight,
'Neath the stars so bright,
When yet the world was young?
"Ah, scarlet geranium, blossom true!
Ah, lovely lobelia blue!
The sun is grown dim, and the sky o'ercast,
The winds grow cold,
The world is old,
And the Autumn comes fast—so fast!"
Johannes was singing clearly again. The lump in his throat had gone away as suddenly as it had come.
Then he heard the gentleman say in great astonishment: "They are singing in Dutch!" And then they had to repeat their song.
Johannes sang as he never yet had sung—with full fervor. All his sadness, all his indefinite longings, found voice in his song. Marjon accompanied him with soft, subdued guitar-strokes, and with her alto voice. Yet the music was entirely hers.
The effect upon the family at the table, moreover, was quite different from that which up to this time they had produced. The stylish lady uttered a prolonged "Ah!" in a soft, high voice, and closely scanned the pair through a long-handled, tortoise-shell lorgnette. The gentleman said in Dutch: "Fine! First rate! Really, that is unusually good!" The little girls clapped their hand, and shouted "Bravo! Bravo!"
Johannes felt his face glowing with pleasure and satisfaction. Then the stylish lady, placing her lorgnette in her lap, said:
"Come up nearer, boys." She, too, now spoke in Dutch, but with a foreign accent, that sounded very charming to Johannes.
"Tell me," she said kindly, "where did you come from, and where did you find that beautiful little song?"
"We came from Holland, Mevrouw," replied Johannes, still a trifle confused, "and we made the song ourselves."