While we sat talking that first evening, there suddenly came three cries, as of three little heads straining out of a nest, for ‘Father’; and obedient, with a laugh, he left us.  This, we soon learnt, was a part of the sweet evening ritual of home.  After mother’s more practical service had been rendered the little ones, and they were cosily ’tucked in,’ then came ‘father’s turn,’ which consisted of his sitting by their bedside—­Owen and Geoffrey on one hand, and little queen Phyllis, maidenlike in solitary cot, on the other—­and crooning to them a little evening song.  In the dark, too, I should say, for it was one of his wise provisions that they should be saved from ever fearing that; and that, whenever they awoke to find it round them in the middle of the night, it should bring them no other association but ‘father’s voice.’

A quaint recitative of his own, which he generally contrived to vary each night, was the song, a loving croon of sleep and rest.  The brotherhood of rest, one might name his theme for grown-up folk; as in the morning, we afterwards learnt, he is wont to sing them another little song of the brotherhood of work; the aim of his whole beautiful effort for them being to fill their hearts with a sense of the brotherhood of all living things—­flowers, butterflies, bees and birds, the milk-boy, the policeman, the man at the crossing, the grocer’s pony, all within the circle of their little lives, as living and working in one great camaraderie.  Sometimes he would extemporise a little rhyme for them, filling it out with his clear, happy voice, and that tender pantomime that comes so naturally to a man who not merely loves children—­for who is there that does not?—­but one born with the instinct for intercourse with them.  To those not so born it is as difficult to enter into the life and prattle of birds.  I have once or twice crept outside the bedroom door when neither children nor George thought of eavesdroppers, and the following little songs are impressions from memory of his.  You must imagine them chanted by a voice full of the infinite tenderness of fatherhood, and even then you will but dimly realise the music they have as he sings them.  I run the risk of his forgiving my printing them here:—­

  MORNING SONG.

  Morning comes to little eyes,
  Wakens birds and butterflies,
  Bids the flower uplift his head,
  Calls the whole round world from bed. 
    Up jump Geoffrey! 
      Up jump Owen!! 
    Then up jump Phyllis!!! 
      And father’s going!

  EVENING SONG.

  The sun is weary, for he ran
    So far and fast to-day;
  The birds are weary, for who sang
    So many songs as they? 
  The bees and butterflies at last
    Are tired out; for just think, too,
  How many gardens through the day
    Their little wings have fluttered through.