Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/199

Rh All through the ballad, the small yellow mongrel at his feet, with eyes so like his master's, kept mournfully looking up at the singer and alternately averting his gaze in dumb animal embarrassment and uneasiness at the minor strain.

"Poor lady and oh, the poor little bebee!" sighed the troubadour.

Then he looked at the dog and at the girl. He felt a little ashamed. He understood why she shifted her position so uneasily—why her breast rose and fell once—at the finish of the song.

"It's a beautiful song, Dick—and thank you. But it's sad. I like it and yet I don't like it."

"Perhaps the lady would like to hear the tale of the wicked Pierre who mock the good Saints and go aloft in the night an' was all swallow up in St. Elmo's Fire. That ees not sad, there ees no wife an' little bebee in that tale."

"Never mind now, Dick."

"Or the tale of Pedro who marry a mermaid and love her so much and pray so hard that the good God change her tail into legs and petticoat. They live in a little hut in the hills and have many goats. Then they forget their prayers and when the first little bebee come, it have a tail. Then for a year very hard they pray, but the second little bebee it also have a tail, and the third. They never have any more bebees. Those little tails punish them, for they forget the good God."

But Sally was in no mood for his stories now. That refrain still echoed in her ears. Her averted little nose and pretty mouth expressed scorn.

"And you believe that?"