"'And she tied a piece of ribbon round his bonnie, bonnie waist, To let the ladies know he was married,'" Laura sang.... "Oh, lovely!" Amory murmured, her golden eyes closed. Then Walter, whose father was Herman Wyron the impresario, recited an unpublished poem of Wilde's, following it with one of Aristide Bruant's in French; and after that Laura sang again, 'The Morning Dew.' Amory wished that she was coming into her new abode on the morrow, and that these delightful companions might come to visit her every night. She had whispered to Cosimo to get up quietly and get her a crayon and a piece of paper; putting her hair from her eyes with the fingers of her left hand, she quietly made notes on a piece of paper on the floor with her right; and "Amory's going to do it!" the whisper went softly round.... Amory felt that she really must "do" it. It ought to "come" beautifully--Laura with the guitar and the coloured streamers, so--Walter's thin face at its most pensive, so--Katie Deedes in that adorable curled-up pose at Laura's feet, with the jewel of fire-light on her shoe-buckle and her face quite lost in the shadow, so--and perhaps when she came to paint it, she would get Cosimo to stand quite behind, where the moonlight on the window-sill was almost of a sulphur-flame blue.... And as she saw Amory busily sketching, Laura did not put down the guitar, but went on softly singing song after song, from her _Somersetshire Songs_ and the _Persian Garden_, her fingers seeming to cull the sparse and chosen chords from the strings as if each one had been a picked flower. How different from Glenerne, with its brainless vamping and its bawled choruses from _The Scottish Students' Song Book_!... Amory, as she worked, now revelled in the thought that she would not be at Glenerne much longer....