For sailormen at sea,
He pulls his ropes and trims his sails,
And sings so merrily——
His fresh young voice rang out high and clear in the new warm sunlight.
“Jo!” exclaimed Ann. “I never have heard you sing. I didn’t know you could. Where did you learn that song?”
“I sing only when I’m in the boat,” Jo answered laughingly. “It must be the bobbing up and down that makes me want to do it, just like a chippie bird swinging on the branch of a tree. My mother used to sing me that song when I was little. She taught it to me.”
“You were old enough to remember her?” Ann asked gently.
“Yes,” he replied, speaking as gently as Ann had asked her question, “I remember her very well. I was nine years old when she got through.”
Ann had learned since she came to Pine Ledge that the fishermen never spoke of any one as dying. They talked as though the person who had left this world had finished a task and gone somewhere else. They had “got through” with the present job of living and were resting.
“My mother taught the district school before she was married,” Jo continued. “She was very smart and she taught me a great deal during the winter evenings. In lots of ways she was like your mother; kind, you know, with never a cross word, and always understanding when I tried to please her. She knew lots of songs and taught them to me. How she used to laugh because I always got the tune right even when I was so little that I could hardly say the words! One bit she used to sing a lot and I liked it one of the best, but though I remember the tune I have forgotten most of the words. I wish I knew them. Maybe you know it, Ann. It started something like this: