--Alas! what a golden, delicious afternoon is blowing without there, wasting for ever; and never a glimpse of it. Delicate work this! Here's a needle might serve for a genuine stiletto! No matter,--it is the cause,--it is the cause that makes, as my mother says, each stitch in this clumsy fabric a grander thing than the flashing of the bravest lance that brave knight ever won. (_Singing_) _The brooks are talking in the dell, Tul la lul, tul la lul, The brooks are talking low, and sweet, Under the boughs where th' arches meet; Come to the dell, come to the dell, Oh come, come_. _The birds are singing in the dell, Wee wee whoo, wee wee whoo; The birds are singing wild and free, In every bough of the forest tree, Come to the dell, come to the dell, Oh come, come_. _And there the idle breezes lie, Whispering, whispering, Whispering with the laughing leaves. And nothing says each idle breeze, But come, come, come, O lady come, Come to th' dell_. [_Mrs. Grey enters from without_.] _Mrs. G_. Do not sing, Annie. _Annie_. Crying would better befit the times, I know,--Dear mother, what is this? _Mrs. G_. Hush,--asleep--is she? _Annie_. This hour, and quiet as an infant. Need enough there was of it too. See, what a perfect damask mother! _Mrs. G_. Draw the curtain on that sunshine there. This sleep has flushed her. Ay, a painter might have dropped that golden hair,--yet this delicate beauty is but the martyr's wreath now, with its fine nerve and shrinking helplessness. No, Annie; put away your hat, my love,--you cannot go to the lodge to-night. _Annie_. Mother? _Mrs. G_. You cannot go to the glen to-night. This is no time for idle pleasure, God knows. _Annie_. Why, you have been weeping in earnest, and your cheek is pale.--And now I know where that sad appointment led you. Is it over? That it should be in our humanity to bear, what in our ease we cannot, _cannot_ think of! _Mrs. G_. Harder things for humanity are there than bodily anguish, sharp though it be. It was not the boy,--the mother's anguish, I wept for, Annie. _Annie_. Poor Endross! And he will go, to his dying day, a crippled thing. But yesterday I saw him springing by so proudly! And the mother---- _Mrs. G_. "_Words, words_," she answered sternly when I tried to comfort her; "ay, words are easy. _Wait till you see your own child's blood_. Wait till you stand by and see his young limbs hewn away, and the groans come thicker and thicker that you cannot soothe; and then let them prate to you of the good cause." Bitter words! God knows what is in store for us;--all day this strange dread has clung to me. _Annie_. Dear mother, is not this the superstition you were wont to chide?