"That's right, mamma," Lulu said. "Come and sit down."
Mrs. Bett entered with a leisurely air of doing the thing next expected of her.
"I don't hear any more playin' and singin'," she remarked. "It sounded real nice."
"We—we sung all I knew how to play, I guess, mamma."
"I use' to play on the melodeon," Mrs. Bett volunteered, and spread and examined her right hand.
"Well!" said Cornish.
She now told them about her log-house in a New England clearing, when she was a bride. All her store of drama and life came from her. She rehearsed it with far eyes. She laughed at old delights, drooped at old fears. She told about her little daughter who had died at sixteen—a tragedy such as once would have been renewed in a vital ballad. At the end she yawned frankly as if, in some terrible sophistication, she had been telling the story of some one else.
"Give us one more piece," she said.
"Can we?" Cornish asked.
"I can play 'I Think When I Read That Sweet Story of Old,'" Lulu said.