`Let's hear it once more, Sylvie,' I said, delighted at getting the chance I had long wished for, of hearing her sing. But Sylvie turned shy and frightened in a moment.

`No, please not!' she said, in an earnest `aside' to me. `Bessie knows it quite perfect now. Bessie can sing it!'

`Aye, aye! Let Bessie sing it!' said the proud mother. `Bessie has a bonny voice of her own,' (this again was an `aside' to me) `though I say it as shouldn't!'

Bessie was only too happy to accept the `encore'. So the plump little Mamma sat down at our feet, with her hideous daughter reclining stiffly across her lap (it was one of a kind that wo'n't sit down, under any amount of persuasion), and, with a face simply beaming with delight, began the lullaby, in a shout that ought to have frightened the poor baby into fits. The Head-Nurse crouched down behind her, keeping herself respectfully in the background, with her hands on the shoulders of her little mistress, so as to be ready to act as Prompter, if required, and to supply `each gap in faithless memory void'.

The shout, with which she began, proved to be only a momentary effort. After a very few notes, Bessie toned down, and sang on in a small but very sweet voice. At first her great black eyes were fixed on her mother, but soon her gaze wandered upwards, among the apples, and she seemed to have quite forgotten that she had any other audience than her Baby, and her Head-Nurse, who once or twice supplied, almost inaudibly, the right note, when the singer was-getting a little `flat'.

`Matilda fane, you never look
At any toy or picture-book:
I show you pretty things in vain--
You must be blind, Matilda fane!

`I ask you riddles, tell you tales,
But all our conversation fails:
You never answer me again--
I fear you're dumb, Matilda fane!

`Matilda, darling, when I call,
You never seem to hear at all:
I shout with all my might and main--
But you're so deaf, Matilda fane!

`Matilda fane, you needn't mind:
For, though you're deaf, and dumb, and blind,
There's some one loves you, it is plain--
And that is me, Matilda fane!'

She sang three of the verses in a rather perfunctory style, but the last stanza evidently excited the little maiden. Her voice rose, ever clearer and louder: she had a rapt look on her face, as if suddenly inspired, and, as she sang the last few words, she clasped to her heart the inattentive Matilda Jane.

`Kiss it now!' prompted the Head-Nurse. And in a moment the simpering meaningless face of the Baby was covered with a shower of passionate kisses.

`What a bonny song!' cried the Farmer's wife. `Who made the words, dearie?'

`I--I think I'll look for Bruno,' Sylvie said demurely, and left us hastily. The curious child seemed always afraid of being praised, or even noticed.

`Sylvie planned the words,' Bessie informed us, proud of her superior information: `and Bruno planned the music--and I sang it!' (this last circumstance, by the way, we did not need to be told).

So we followed Sylvie, and all entered the parlour together. Bruno was still standing at the window, with his elbows on the sill. He had, apparently, finished the story that he was telling to the fly, and had found a new occupation. `Don't imperrupt!' he said as we came in. `I'm counting the Pigs in the field!'

`How many are there?' I enquired.

`About a thousand and four,' said Bruno.

`You mean "about a thousand",' Sylvie corrected him. `There's no good saying "and four": you ca'n't be sure about the four!'