"Easy. You just furnish the words and I'll take care of the music. If it isn't so fine at first, that doesn't matter. You'll see how the money rains down, even if they don't understand a thing." Marjon knew her public. It came out as she said it would. When they began to sing, the brusque customs collectors, the old skipper, and other ships' folk in the boats lying next them, all listened; and the stokers of the little tugboat stuck their soot-begrimed faces out of the machine-room hatch, and they, also, listened. For those two young voices floated softly and harmoniously out over the calmly flowing current, and there was something very winning in the two slender brothers--something fine and striking. They were quite unlike the usual circus-people. There was something about them which instantly made itself felt, even upon a rude audience, although no one there could tell in what it consisted, nor understand what they were singing about, nor even the words. At first they sang their old songs--_The Song of the Butterfly,_ and the melancholy song that Marjon had made alone, and which Johannes, rather disdainfully, had named _The Nurse-Maid's Song_, and also the one Marjon had composed in the evening, in the boat. But when Marjon said, "You must make something new," Johannes looked very serious, and said: "You cannot _make_ verses--they are born as much as children are." Marjon blushed; and, laughing in her confusion, she replied: "What silly things you do say, Jo. It's well that the dark woman doesn't hear you. She might take you in hand." After a moment of silence, she resumed: "I believe you talk trash, Jo. When I make songs the music does come of itself; but I have to finish it off, though. I must _make_--compose, you know. It's exactly," she continued, after a pause, "as if a troop of children came in, all unexpected--wild and in disorder, and as if, like a school-teacher, I made them pass in a procession--two by two--and stroked their clothing smooth, and put flowers in their hands, and then set them marching. That's the way I make songs, and so must you make verses. Try now!" "Exactly," said Johannes;'"but yet the children must first come of themselves." "But are they not all there, Jo?" * * * * * Gazing up into the great dome of the evening sky, where the pale stars were just beginning to sparkle, Johannes thought it over. He thought of the fine day he had had, and also of what he had felt coming into his head. "Really," said Marjon, rather drily, "you'll just have to, whether you want to or not--to keep from starving." Then, as if desperately alarmed, Johannes went in search of pencil and paper; and truly, in came the disorderly children, and he arranged them in file, prinked them up, and dealt them out flowers. He first wrote this: