Mrs. Corrie was standing in the hall when the little tea-party came out of the dining-room. She raised her head and stood shaped in the well-cut lines of her long brown and fawn check coat and skirt against the bead curtain that led to the drawing-room, looking across at them. The boy tottered blindly across the hall with arms outstretched. “Oh, Rollo, Rollo,” he said brokenly, as he reached her, pressing his hands up against her grey suède waistcoat and his face into her skirt, “are we going to _h--ave_ you?” Mrs. Corrie began singing in a thin laughing voice, taking the boy by the wrists. “No, no,” he said sharply, “let me hold you a minute.” But Mrs. Corrie danced, forcing his steps as he pressed against her. Up and down the hall they capered while Sybil pranced round them whirling her skirts and clapping her hands. Miriam sank into a settee. The cold March sunlight streaming in through the thinly curtained windows painted the sharply bobbing figures in faint shadows on the wall opposite her. 3 When the dancers were breathless the little party strayed into the drawing-room. Presently they were gathered at the piano. Mrs. Corrie sat on a striped ottoman and peering closely picked out the airs of songs that made Miriam stare in amazement. They all sang. Slowly and stumblingly with many gasps of annoyance from Mrs. Corrie and the children violently assaulting each other whenever either of them got ahead of the halting accompaniment, they sang through all the songs in an album with a brightly decorated paper cover. But in their performance there was no tune, no rhythm, and the words spoken out slowly and separately were intolerable to her. One song they sang three times. Its chorus Stiboo--stib_ee_, Sti-ibbety-_oo_ Sti-ibbety-b_oo_, Stib_ee_, which Sybil could sing without the piano with an extraordinary flourishing rapidity, pirouetting as she sang, they attacked again and again, slowly and waveringly, fitting the syllables note by note into the printed line of disconnected jerkily tailed quavers.... They thought this was music. Encouraged at last by the fervour of the halting performance Miriam found herself seated at the piano attacking the score. They went through the songs from the beginning, three thin blissful wavering tremulous voices, with a careful perfect monotony of emphasis, uninfluenced by any variation of accent or inflection introduced by Miriam into the accompaniment. Looking round as they reached the end she saw flushed rapt faces with happy eyes gleaming through the gathering twilight. They smiled at her as they sang. When they had finished they lit the piano candles and sang “Stiboo” once more. 4