Elsie Marley was not interrupted, as it happened. Some little time
passed and still she was alone. The girl could not understand a
certain unrest that was upon her. She waited a few moments longer,
then she moved close to the window so as to leave more than half the
seat vacant. Still nothing happened.
At length she turned and looked back. Elsie Moss, who sat between an
old lady and a little boy, smiled and nodded. Elsie Marley half
smiled. Still the other made no move. Then she looked back, really
smiled, and beckoned her to a place beside her.
Elsie Moss, more than willing to be summoned, had some difficulty in
getting away from her present companions. But the grandmother
prevailed upon the little boy to spare her, and she presented herself
at Elsie Marley's seat smiling in her irresistible way with the big
dimples indented, and looking as if she would like to hug her as she
had hugged the little girl outside. And Elsie Marley had a curious
intimation that she shouldn't have minded greatly.
"What do you think," exclaimed Miss Moss as she seated herself, "you
know all my family history and I don't even know your name. I've been
guessing. It ought to be either Isabel or Hildegarde. Is it? Oh, I
do wish it were, they're both so sort of stately and princess-like that
they'd just suit you."
"It isn't either," responded the other with a curious sense of
disappointment. "My name is Elsie also."
"Of all things! But it's rather jolly, after all. And what's the
rest?"
"Marley, Elsie Pritchard Marley. But at home they called me Elsie
Pritchard, because I am--all Pritchard."
Unacquainted with the Pritchard distinction, Elsie Moss was not
impressed. But she exclaimed gleefully over the real surname.
"Elsie Marley!" she cried. "Why, isn't that funny, and oh, isn't it
dear! Elsie Marley, honey!"
The other girl looked blank.
"Of course you know the song, or at least the rhyme?"
"Song? Rhyme?"
"Why, yes. You must have heard it: 'And Do You Ken Elsie Marley,
Honey?'"
"Is it really and truly Elsie Marley?" queried the pale Elsie speaking
for the first time like a real girl, though she had no girlish
vocabulary from which to draw.
"Sure," asserted the other, delighted to be able to surprise her
seatmate. And she sang a stanza in the sweetest voice Elsie Marley had
ever heard, though she had heard good music all her life, and famous
singers.
"Do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?
The wife who sells the barley, honey?
She won't get up to serve her swine,
And do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?"
"Is there--any more?" demanded Elsie Marley almost eagerly.
"One more, and then you just repeat the first. I've known it all my
life. Mother used to sing it to me when I was a baby. Then a few
years ago when I first went to see vaudeville, I 'got it up,' as they
say, with dancing and a little acting. I used to spring it on people
that came to the house. Dad liked it, but it made my stepmother feel
bad--dad said because I was too professional."
She sighed deeply.
"Sing the rest, please, Elsie?" asked the other, using her name for the
first time.
"I will if you'll let me call you Elsie-Honey? You see it really
belongs."
Elsie knew that it was silly, but she found herself quite willing. She
seemed under a strange spell.
"Only," she added, with a stronger sensation of discomfort, "after
to-morrow it isn't likely we'll ever see one another again."
"Oh, yes we will, sure. Why, we just _must_--at least if you want to
half as much as I do, Elsie-Honey?"
"I do," Elsie confessed shyly and now with a curiously pleasant
feeling. "And now, Elsie, please sing the other stanzas."
"It sounds just dear to say _stanzas_," cried the other. "I should
always say _verses_, even if I didn't forget which was which."
With an absurd little flourish of her hands, she turned slightly in her
seat. The dimples came out strongly, and though she sat quite still,
there was truly something dramatic in the manner in which the would-be
actress sang the lines.
"Elsie Marley is grown so fine
She won't get up to feed the swine,
But lies in bed till eight or nine,
And surely she does take her time.
Do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?
The wife who sells the barley, honey?
She won't get up to serve her swine,
And do you ken Elsie Marley, honey?"
Both girls broke into natural, infectious laughter. Mr. and Mrs.
Bliss, or any one who had known Elsie Marley, could scarcely have
believed their eyes or credited their hearing. But Elsie's father, who
had died while she was an infant, had had a warm heart and a keen sense
of humor, and it might well be that his daughter had inherited
something of this that had lain dormant all the while. For truly, the
wholesome, hardy qualities brought out in others through simple human
association had had little chance to germinate in her hothouse
existence in the Pritchard household.
Despite the rumble of the train, four children in the rear of the car
caught the sound of the singing and came trooping up begging for more.
A pretty nursemaid followed with a fat, smiling infant. Elsie Moss
made her sit down with it (beside Elsie Marley!) and she herself
perched on the arm of the seat and sang song after song until it was
time to go into the dining-car. The children, wild with enthusiasm,
were not in reality more appreciative of the lovely voice than Elsie
Marley herself. The two girls went in to dinner together in happy
companionship.