Her face had become drawn; the eyes staring into his were bright with luminous tears. It was as if he could feel on himself infection of quivering approach of hysteria. He shook himself together. By the gods, he'd have no more of these high-pitched, feverish scenes with their trembling reactions. He wanted no news at such a cost. The girl, this poor, fanatical flower-like thing, frantic under her visionary obsessions, she was the only thing that mattered now.
He rose, lifted her and carried her high in his arms up and down the length of the great room. "You dear baby," he rocked her back and forth soothingly. "You dear pretty little baby. 'Rock-a-by baby in the tree top.' That's how we sing to naughty little babies in my country." She had struggled a moment when he picked her up, surprised, frightened, but now she lay quiet; the tremble had left her, the flicker of overwrought excitation in her eyes had given place to wonder; her body relaxed, a wistful smile crept over her lips. "But, Hugh-san, I'm not a baby, don't----"
"Keep quiet, you're only a baby, my baby, cry-baby. Listen, 'When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the wind blows, the cradle will fall, and,'" he gave her a great swing, "'down comes baby, cradle and all.'"
He tumbled her into the nest of soft silk _futon_. She lay there, laughing. "Oh, but you are silly, Hugh-san. I had never thought that you could be like that. And what a funny song. Sing me some more like that, and tell me what they mean."
He was overjoyed that the remedy had been so potent. He would have her all right in a jiffy. Out of his almost forgotten store of Mother Goose rimes he conjured the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, the Ride a Cock Horse, and others; he remembered the fairy tales which had delighted Kimiko-san and brought them to bear. But she liked the songs best, insisted on his singing an odd potpourri of nursery nonsense transformed into labored Japanese. The maid coming with breakfast found them in high spirits.
After the meal, they went for a walk through the village. There they heard the news; the trains would be running that afternoon. "I told you so," triumphed Sadako-san, but he turned her attention to a bent-backed crone who, he insisted, was the living image of the Old Woman in the Shoe. He wanted no more of the other. At luncheon they had more nursery entertainment. She was as happy, as eagerly receptive as a young bird stretching out its beak clamorous for ever more food. It was wholly delightful. Why could she not always be like that, this entrancing, absurd girl revolutionist who could be enticed in a moment from Karl Marx to Mother Goose?