A little song began to weave itself in my brain. I had made songs before: almost too shy to set down on paper they were. But here, in Cuba, where everything seemed softness and release, I wondered if perhaps I could not sing with a stronger voice, and shape my songs with pen and ink. What was it Richard Warren had said about poets? And then, suddenly I knew that it was the thought of him which had taken me out of sleep and sent me trembling to the window, with my breast bare to the wonderful night. I knew that, once and for all, all beauty must be inextricably woven with the thought of him who had signed himself my "lover." It was then that I became aware that something was hurting me cruelly--something cold and hard and forbidding. I crept back to bed with the marks of the bars across my breast. In the morning I woke to find Peter sitting crosslegged on my bed saying solemnly, "They're blue! They're grey! No, they're open and they're brown!" Wide awake now, I caught him to me, cuddled him close and then asked wildly, "Oh-h, Peter!--what's that?" Not far from my window a raucous voice was saying, "Bring me my coffee! Coffee! Norah! Hurry up!" "Perhaps it's Uncle Bill!" said Peter, open-mouthed. "Of course it isn't, Peter," I said quite crossly, and climbed out of bed. From my window, in the full, dazzling sunlight, I could see where the kitchen made an L, and the screened kitchen porch from which that terrifying voice emanated. "Hurry!" it was saying. "Gol dern! Coffee! Coffee!" "Why, Peter," I cried, "it's a macaw! A beauty! I've never seen one before--only pictures! Hurry and get dressed and let's go out and say good-morning to him!" Sarah, apparently at home, and certainly composed, but rather too communicative as to the habits of "heathen," appeared, to help me dress and to hustle Peter into his own room. But before I was ready, a knock came at the door, and on its heels, Norah, bearing fragrant coffee and hot, brown rolls. "Good morning, and it's never _up_ ye are!" she said in astonishment, setting the tray down on a little table which she spread with a white cloth. "Doesn't one get up in Cuba?" I asked, laughing, as, in a negligée, I sat down to my breakfast. "Not yet," she answered, "it's coffee ye have in bed, and then at eleven-thirty a real, big breakfast-lunch. Tea's at four, and dinner's at eight--unless ye'd rather it was different, ma'am," she added hastily. "Not at all," I assured her, "I think it's a delightful arrangement. When in Cuba...." I began gaily. "Smoke Cubebs!" finished another voice, and my husband's dark head appeared in the open doorway. "Good morning, Mavis. How did you sleep?" "Beautifully," I told him, just a little bit embarrassed as his tall, bathrobed figure wandered unconcernedly in. "Another cup," he said to Norah, with a side-glance at me and a careless, "with your permission."