The Major was not her only audience. She frequently "pretended" for
Margot and Piqueur and Bele, prancing gaily-about them in their snug
kitchen on the long winter evenings when they huddled by their fire.
For them she whistled all the droll bits of Marthy's songs that she
remembered. Piqueur only listened solemnly, with his smothered briar
pipe held politely in his hand; but Margot, buxom, and red cheeked
with her iron gray hair tucked under her flaring cap would sit and
gape and laugh and quite forget her knitting whenever she could hear,

"He who would woo a widow must not dally He must make hay while the
sun doth shine He must not say 'Widow, be mine--be mine!--'"

Felicia's absurd whine for the timorous lover always made Bele snort
from his corner,

"But boldly cry 'Widow, thou MUST--'"

Ah, the deep contralto of that boyish voice of hers roundly mouthing
the pompous swain's wooing!

She could always make Margot cry when she "pretended" _The Wreck of the
Polly Ann_--with her gray eyes wide with excitement as she described the
rolling waves from the top of the rigging! I don't suppose she ever knew
all of the words of any of these songs or ballads, she never did any of
them quite the same any time, but she caught at the plot and she babbled
a scrap or two of the chorus and she always knew every lilting turn of
the tunes.

There was one "pretend" she could only do when she was alone. She did
not try it often. Sometimes on the spring nights when the tender