"Maman," she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on
his way to his room, "In the garden--" and the Major listened and
sighed.

She awoke to the diddling drone of Piqueur's quavering voice. In the
clear sweetness of the May morning above the twittering of the birds
it raised itself, the quaint measures delighting her ears. Even in
Piqueur's thin falsetto the old melody sang itself--tender, graceful,
spirited, never lagging--he was dropping pea seeds into the trench
that Margot had prepared in the kitchen dooryard, he was always
content when he was planting.

Felicia limped to the window across the moth-eaten carpet with its
faded doves and roses. She flung the casement out and listened
eagerly.

"Piqueur," she cried entreatingly "tell me just what it says--that
song you sing." But it was Margot who leaned on her hoe and looked up
at the girl and laughed.

"He sings of a girl--of more than one girl--who takes care of sheep--
the song tells them to hurry up--that time drips through the fingers
like water--" Margot's own throaty voice joined lustily into her
uncle's refrain, but a second later she was translating once more.
"You must find your fun in the spring forests--when you're young--"

The girl in the window above them clapped her hands. A slender black-
haired, eager-eyed dryad, whose shabby brocaded dressing gown trailed
around her bandaged foot--