r head and looked in at me surprisedly: "Why, what is
the matter with you, child--aren't you awake, that you don't know what
you are doing? You were singing 'the lament' Joe Barrett sang in the
French cemetery."

"Oh!" I cried, in late-coming recognition, "you are right." I scrambled
up, and thrusting back my hair from my face, started to sing it again,
and lo! not a note could I catch. Again and again I tried; I shut my eyes
and strove to recall that wail--no use. Then, remembering what a memory
my mother had for _airs_ heard but once or twice, I called: "Dear, can't
you start 'the lament' for me, I have lost it entirely?"

She opened her lips, paused, looked surprised, then said, positively: "I
might never have heard it, I can't get either its beginning or ending."

I sprang from the bed, and in bare, unslippered feet, ran to the piano in
the front room--no use; I never again heard, waking or sleeping, another
note of "the lament."

Mother called out presently: "Do you know what time it is? Go back and
finish your sleep, it's not quite six o'clock."

As I obediently returned to my room, I said, in a troubled voice: "What
do you suppose it means, mother?" and as she snuggled her head back upon
her pillow, she laughingly answered: "Oh, I suppose it's a sign you are
going to hear from Joe Barrett soon. If you do, I hope it won't be
anything bad, poor fellow!" for mother liked the "big Irish boy," as she
called him.

I fell asleep again, but was up and ready at nine for our rather-foreign
breakfast of coffee, rolls, and salad. Now in our partnership mother was
mistress of the house, and I, doing the outside work, being the
wage-winner, was the _man_ of the house, and as such had the master's
inalienable right to the morning paper with my coffee. That the mistress
occasionally peeped at the headlines before the _master_ rose was a fact
judiciously ignored by both, so long as the paper was ever found neatly
folded beside the waiting coffee-cup. Imagine then my surprise when,
coming into the room, I found my mother sitting at table with the badge
of authority in her own hands, and my cup standing shorn of all its
dignity. She avoided my eye, and hastily pouring coffee, said: "Drink it
while it's hot, dear, and--and I'll just glance at the paper a moment."

I sat back and stared, and I was just beginning to laugh at our small
comedy when I discovered that mother, she of the rock-steady nerves, was
trembling. Without lo