Page:Robins - My Little Sister.djvu/20

8 which, when she was stirred, she brought down the flying hands on some rich, resolving chord. Years after I was still able only to practise, Bettina "played." And better even than her playing was Bettina's singing. That began when she was quite a baby. I see her now, a small figure, all white except her green shoes and her hair of sunset gold, singing; singing a nursery rhyme to an ancient tune my mother had found in one of her collections of old English song:

We thought this specially accomplished of Bettina, because it was the first thing she sang in English.

I do not remember how we learned French. It must have been the first language that we spoke. Our mother, without apparent intention, kept us to the habit of talking French when we did the pleasantest things. All the phrases and verbal framework of our games were French; all the mythology stories were in French.

And we seemed to fall into that tongue only by chance when we went collecting treasures for our herbarium, or the fresh-water aquarium.