“That’s fine,” said her husband, then he nudged master to listen to the song his wife had begun to sing.
She had dropped into her little rocker that she kept in the smoking-room among the men’s big chairs, and she was going over something of her own composition in a low voice, holding the baby’s face against her own as she sang—
“I never had a baby, but I know a little song,
And I sing it to my baby that does to me belong,
She’s the sweetest little baby that ever I did see,
The brownest, sweetest baby and she’s all the world to me!”
Now, I didn’t think this was so very clever, and I don’t think master did, but Mr. Bonstone was so enraptured that he paid a young man a handsome sum to round out this song about the brown baby and set it to music, and strange to say, the simple words and the air became so popular that I even heard boys whistling it in the streets of New York.
After a time, the poor mother died, and was buried at Mr. Bonstone’s expense.
“My! my! what a funeral they gave her,” said old Ellen. “If ever the Bonstones want anything from the Syrians on this avenue, all they’ve got to do is to say it.”