“Certainly,” said Selwyn.

“Why don’t you?”

“That is another thing you must ask her, my son.”

“Well, then, Eileen—­”

But Miss Erroll was already seated at the nursery piano, and his demands were drowned in a decisive chord which brought the children clustering around her, while their nurses ran among them untying bibs and scrubbing faces and fingers in fresh water.

They sang like seraphs, grouped around the piano, fingers linked behind their backs.  First it was “The Vicar of Bray.”  Then—­and the cat fled at the first chord—­“Lochleven Castle”: 

     “Put off, put off,
     And row with speed
     For now is the time and the hour of need.”

Miss Erroll sang, too; her voice leading—­a charmingly trained, but childlike voice, of no pretensions, as fresh and unspoiled as the girl herself.

There was an interval after “Castles in the Air”; Eileen sat, with her marvellously white hands resting on the keys, awaiting further suggestion.

“Sing that funny song, Uncle Philip!” pleaded Billy; “you know—­the one about: 

       “She hit him with a shingle
       Which made his breeches tingle
     Because he pinched his little baby brother;
       And he ran down the lane
       With his pants full of pain. 
     Oh, a boy’s best friend is his mother!”

“Billy!” gasped Miss Erroll.

Selwyn, mortified, said severely:  “That is a very dreadful song, Billy—­”

“But you taught it to me—­”

Eileen swung around on the piano stool, but Selwyn had seized Billy and was promising to bolo him as soon as he wished.

And Eileen, surveying the scene from her perch, thought that Selwyn’s years seemed to depend entirely upon his occupation, for he looked very boyish down there on his knees among the children; and she had not yet forgotten the sunken pallor of his features in the Park—­no, nor her own question to him, still unanswered.  For she had asked him who that woman was who had been so direct in her smiling salute.  And he had not yet replied; probably never would; for she did not expect to ask him again.

Meanwhile the bolo-men were rushing the outposts to the outposts’ intense satisfaction.

“Bang-bang!” repeated Winthrop; “I hit you, Uncle Philip.  You are dead, you know!”

“Yes, but here comes another!  Fire!” shouted Billy.  “Save the flag!  Hurrah!  Pound on the piano, Eileen, and pretend it’s cannon.”

Chord after chord reverberated through the big sunny room, punctuated by all the cavalry music she had picked up from West Point and her friends in the squadron.

“We can’t get ’em up! 
We can’t get ’em up! 
We can’t get ’em up

      In the morning!”

she sang, calmly watching the progress of the battle, until Selwyn disengaged himself from the melee and sank breathlessly into a chair.