"Then sing for me at thy window," entreated Willan.

"I know not the whole of any song," cried Victorine; but broke, as she
said it, into a snatch of a carol which seemed to the poor infatuated
man at the foot of the stairway like the song of an angel. He hurried
out, and threw himself down under the pear-tree where he had lain
before. The blossoms had all fallen from the pear-tree now, and through
the thinned branches he could see Victorine's window distinctly. She
could see him also.

"It would be no hard thing to love such a man as he, methinks," she said
to herself as she went on leisurely weaving the thick braids of her
hair, and humming a song just low enough for Willan to half hear and
half lose the words.

"Once in a hedge a bird went singing,
Singing because there was nobody near.
Close to the hedge a voice came crying,
'Sing it again! I am waiting to hear.
Sing it forever! 'T is sweet to hear.'

"Never again that bird went singing
Till it was surer that no one was near.
Long in that hedge there was somebody waiting,
Crying in vain, 'I am waiting to hear.
Sing it again! It was sweet to hear.'"

"I wonder if Sister Clarice's lover had asked her to sing, as Willan
Blaycke just now asked me, that she did make this song," thought