and not one of them, had he had the gift of words, but might have said with the poet:—­

 “I have no life, Constantia, now but thee,
  While, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody. 
  Now is thy voice tempest swift and strong,
On which, like one in a trance upborne,
  Secure o’er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn. 
  Now ’tis the breath of summer night,
Which, when the starry waters sleep
  Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,
  Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.”

At last it ceased:  and all men drew their breaths once more; while a low murmur of admiration ran through the crowd, too well-bred to applaud openly, as they longed to do.

“Did you ever hear the like of that, Gentleman Jan?”

“Or see?  I used to say no one could hold a candle to our Grace but she—­ she looked like a born queen all the time!”

“Well, she belongs to us, too, so we’ve a right to be proud of her.  Why, here’s our Grace all the while!”

True enough; Grace had been standing among the crowd all the while, rapt, like them, her eyes fixed on Valencia, and full, too, of tears.  They had been called up first by the melody itself, and then, by a chain of thought peculiar to Grace, by the faces round her.

“Ah! if Grace had been here!” cried one, “we’d have had her dra’ed off in the midst of the children.”

“Ah! that would ha’ been as nat’ral as life!”

“Silence, you!” says Gentleman Jan, who generally feels a mission to teach the rest of the quay good manners, “’Tis the gentleman’s pleasure to settle who he’ll dra’ off, and not wer’n.”

To which abnormal possessive pronoun, Claude rejoined,—­

“Not a bit! whatever you like.  I could not have a better figure for the centre.  I’ll begin again.”

“Oh, do come and sit among the children, Grace!” says Valencia.

“No, thank your ladyship.”

Valencia began urging her; and many a voice round, old as well as young, backed the entreaty.

“Excuse me, my lady,” and she slipped into the crowd; but as she went she spoke low, but clear enough to be heard by all:  “No:  it will be time enough to flatter me, and ask for my picture, when you do what I tell you—­what God tells you!”

“What’s that, then, Grace dear?”

“You know!  I’ve asked you to save your own lives from cholera, and you have not the common sense to do it.  Let me go home and pray for you!”

There was an awkward silence among the men, till some fellow said,—­

“She’m gone mad after that doctor, I think, with his muck-hunting notions.”

And Grace went home, to await the hour of afternoon school.

“What a face!” said Mellot.

“Is it not?  Come and see her in her school, when the children go in at two o’clock.  Ah! there are Scoutbush and St. Pere.”