become a singer instead of an
actress. Now, as always, she rebelled at the idea, and again her
vision of a public singer came to her--a very stout blonde lady in a
very low-cut gown with a very small waist (the picture had not adapted
itself to more modern fashions), placing a fat, squat hand on her
capacious bosom, and uttering meaningless syllables that rose to
shrieks. Anything but that, she said to herself!

Mr. Graham had fallen into a reverie. His hand shaded his brow. He
frowned as he endeavored to recollect something.

"Just where did you get hold of that song?" he inquired.

"My mother used to sing it," replied Elsie, and Miss Pritchard
wondered. So far as she had known, none of the Pritchards had sung,
and it was difficult to fancy Elsie's mother warbling a ditty of that
sort. The birth of her child must have altered Augusta greatly.

"It's an old nursery rhyme, I believe," the artist went on, still half
in his perplexity. "Isn't it singular about the name--or perhaps you
were named for it?"

"I was named _after_ it," responded Elsie demurely.

He smiled, but he was only half attending. He was reaching for
something in the depths of his mind which he did not find, and
presently he sauntered on with bent head. Miss Pritchard took up the
_Spectator_, and Elsie produced the "First Violin," and presently was
lost in that.

CHAPTER XVI

The next day as the artist met Elsie on the beach on her way to the
bath-house, his face lighted up.

"Oh, Miss Marley, it all came back to me, after twenty years," he
exclaimed. "Something about you has haunted my memory ever since I
first saw you last week, and the song yesterday made it more definite
and more perplexing. I woke in the night and it all came back. I
heard that very same song on the train going South as a young
man--comparatively young, though you wouldn't call it so. Do you want
to sit down a moment and let me tell you?

"I haven't even thought of it for a dozen years," he said when they had
found a convenient bench. "As I said, we were bound southward, and it
was toward night. The seat in front of me was occupied by an
exceedingly pretty young lady and a gentleman who must have been her
brother or her husband--girls married younger in those days--for their
name, which escapes me, was the same. Farther ahead, on the opposite
side of the car, was a woman with an infant in her arms and a boy baby
of under two years at her side. As