"Do you play or sing yourself, Mr. Harris?" Bee inquired.
"No," he said; "no, I'm not musical." In this musical family he regretted to acknowledge it.
"Sure?" asked Hilda, swinging round on the stool.
"Oh yes, unfortunately—quite sure." He was at the point of adding: "Though I was, brought up in the thick of it all," but to explain that his mother's second husband had been a negro was never agreeable to him. "I'm awfully fond of it, though! I could listen to singing all night. Won't you give us something else? Do, please; don't get up!"
"I really don't know what there is." She ruffled the stack beside her listlessly. "I'm afraid there's nothing else for me to sing."
"Let me help you find something."
"If you can. If you really haven't had enough?"
He went across to her, and they bent their heads over the heap together; and he hung at the piano while she sang another entirely new ballad about Days that were No More, and a Stream.
When she finished he murmured "Thank you," and threw into his manner the suggestion of being too much moved to say anything more lengthy.
"It's rather pretty, isn't it?" she said, lifting her eyes in the candle-light.