[Sidenote:  Barbara]

“What colour is your hair, Barbara?” He had asked the question many times.

“The colour of ripe corn, Daddy.  Don’t you remember my telling you?”

He leaned forward to stroke the shining braids.  “And your eyes?”

“Like the larkspur that grows in the garden.”

“I know—­your dear mother’s eyes.”  He touched her face gently as he spoke.  “Your skin is so smooth—­is it fair?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“I think you must be beautiful; I have asked Miriam so often, but she will not tell me.  She only says you look well enough and something like your mother.  Are you beautiful?”

“Oh, Daddy!  Daddy!” laughed Barbara, in confusion.  “You mustn’t ask such questions!  Didn’t you say you had made two songs?  What is the other one?”

Miriam sat in the dining-room, out of sight but within hearing.  Having observed that in her presence they laughed less, she spent her evenings alone unless they urged her to join them.  She had a newspaper more than a week old, but, as yet, she had not read it.  She sat staring into the shadows, with the light of her one candle flickering upon her face, nervously moving her work-worn hands.

“The other song,” reminded Barbara, gently.

[Sidenote:  Song of the Sunset]

“This one was about a sunset,” he sighed.  “It was such a sunset as was never on sea or land, because two who loved each other saw it together.  God and all His angels had hung a marvellous tapestry from the high walls of Heaven, and it reached almost to the mountain-tops, where some of the little clouds sleep.

“The man said, ‘Shall we always look for the sunsets together?’

“The woman smiled and answered, ‘Yes, always.’

“‘And,’ the man continued, ’when one of us goes on the last long journey?’

“‘Then,’ answered the woman, ’the other will not be watching alone.  For, I think, there in the West is the Golden City with the jasper walls and the jewelled foundations, where the twelve gates are twelve pearls.’”

There was a long silence.  “And so—­” said Barbara, softly.

Ambrose North lifted his grey head from his hands and rose to his feet unsteadily.  “And so,” he said, with difficulty, “she leans from the sunset toward him, but he can never see her, because he is blind.  Oh, Barbara,” he cried, passionately, “last night I dreamed that you could walk and I could see!”

“So we can, Daddy,” said Barbara, very gently.  “Our souls are neither blind nor lame.  Here, I am eyes for you and you are feet for me, so we belong together.  And—­past the sunset——­”

“Past the sunset,” repeated the old man, dreamily, “soul and body shall be as one.  We must wait—­for life is made up of waiting—­and make what songs we can.”

“I think, Father, that a song should be in poetry, shouldn’t it?”

[Sidenote:  The Real Song]

“Some of them are, but more are not.  Some are music and some are words, and some, like prayers, are feeling.  The real song is in the thrush’s heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs in Spring.  When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush out, laughing—­then you are making a song.”