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There, in the long, long evenings, she would fold her little one in her one sound arm and croon over him in a hot, feverish whisper bits of her favourite ditty: The fisherman, when dawn is nigh, Peers forth to greet the kindling sky.... Above all, she loved the refrain that recurred at the end of each verse with only the change of a word.
Was there ever a mother who did not croon to her fretful child, and who did not rock her babe to sleep with rhythmic lullaby? Song spans the gap from mother Eve to the mother of to-day: the song may vary, though the emotion of the mother-love remains the same.
She was patting his head in rhythm with her rocking as she snuggled and soothed him. There was silence for another interval. Then she began to croon a song above him as she rocked, though the lyric was plainly an improvisation. "Did he have his poor old mother going for a minute? Yes, he did. He had her going for a minute, for a minute. Yes, he had her going good for a minute.
I almost never remember hearing Mammy say an articulate word; but all children and those grown up who have any child left in their hearts can understand her croon. It is cradle music to the initiated.
Nevertheless, Weedon Scott's ear and sympathy were fine enough to catch the new note all but drowned in the fierceness the note that was the faintest hint of a croon of content and that none but he could hear. As the days went by, the evolution of like into love was accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness he knew not what love was.
A cool wind from the hills had set the maple branches to murmuring and hushed the incoming tide as it swept up to the waiting shore. Out in the illimitable darkness of the East, grey surges throbbed like the beating of a troubled heart, but the shore knew only the drowsy croon of a sea that has gone to sleep. Golden lilies swung their censers softly, and the exquisite incense perfumed the dusk.
I could picture in my mind's eye my old grandmother seated on the ground with her thin wisps of hair untied, warming her back in the sun as she made the little round lentil balls to be dried and used for cooking. But somehow I could not recall the songs she used to croon to herself in her weak and quavering voice.
Ye hae set yersel to du his wull, and no yer ain: ye're a king; and for want o' a better croon, I croon ye wi my twa ban's. Little thought Kirsty how near she came, in word and deed, to the crowning of Dante by Virgil, as recorded toward the close of the Purgatorio.
There the sisters might sway and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm.
They all crowded into the little room of the house at the Cove, and a solemn hush fell over it, broken only by the purr of the sea-wind around it and the croon of the waves on the shore. David Spencer gave his daughter away; but, when the ceremony was concluded, Isabella was the first to take the girl in her arms.
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