Her father had come in to find Jean singing songs in the gloaming. It could hardly be said that she was singing to Hugh. She would very likely have been singing at that hour, if she had been quite alone; but she would not have been singing,—
“The Queen has built a navy of ships,
And she has sent them to the sea,”
in a voice that rang clear and full in the darkness, and she would not have followed it with the ballad of “Sir Patrick Spens,” which Mr Dawson was just in time to hear. He was not sure about all this singing of sea songs; but he said nothing at the time, and sat down to listen.
He had heard the ballad scores of times, and sung it too; but he felt himself “creep” and “thrill,” as Jean—her voice now rising strong and clear, now falling into mournful tones like a wail—went through the whole seven and twenty verses. She said it rather than sung it, giving the refrain, not at every verse, but only now and then; the pathos deepening in her tones as she went on towards the end, when—
“The lift was black, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea.”
and there were “tears in her voice” as she ended—
“And lang, lang may the ladies sit
Wi’ their fans into their hands,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!
“And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wi’ the gowd (gold) kames in their hair,
Awaiting for their ain true loves,
For them they’ll see nae mair—”
and then the refrain—which cannot be written down—repeated once and again, each time more softly, till it seemed to die away and be lost in the moan of the wind among the trees. No one spoke for a minute or two.
“I think you might give us something mair cheerfu’ than that, Jean, my lassie,” said her father, inclined to resent his own emotion and the cause of it. “And in the gloaming too!”
“The gloaming is just the time for such ballads, papa. But I didna ken ye were come in. Shall I ring for lights now?” said Jean rising.