whisper bits of her favourite ditty:

The fisherman, when dawn is nigh,
Peers forth to greet the kindling sky....

Above all, she loved the refrain that recurred at the end of
each verse with only the change of a word. It was her little
Jean's lullaby, who became, at the caprice of the words, turn
and turn about, General, Lawyer, and ministrant at the altar
in her fond hopes.

A woman of the people, knowing nothing of the circumstances of
fashionable life, save from a few peeps at their outward pomp
and the vague tales of _concierges_, footmen, and cooks, she
pictured her boy at twenty more beautiful than an archangel,
his breast glittering with decorations, in a drawing-room full
of flowers, amid a bevy of fashionable ladies with manners every
whit as genteel as had the actresses at the _Gymnase_:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
Sweet wee gallant, take thy rest._

Presently the vision changed; now her boy was standing up gowned
in Court, by his eloquence saving the life and honour of some
illustrious client:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
Sweet wee pleader, take thy rest._

Presently again he was an officer under fire, in a brilliant