"Oh, that is all right," she interposed, quietly; "use it whenever you like. Harry bought it two years ago, but he never had the patience to learn it, so it has been used very little. I never heard such playing as yours, and I stepped in to ask you to bring it downstairs and play for us to-night. Mr. Britton will be delighted; he enjoys everything of that sort."
Around the fireside that evening Darrell had an attentive audience, though the appreciation of his auditors was manifested in a manner characteristic of each. Mr. Underwood, after two or three futile attempts to talk business with his partner, finding him very uncommunicative, gave himself up to the enjoyment of his pipe and the music in about equal proportions, indulging surreptitiously in occasional brief naps, though always wide awake at the end of each number and joining heartily in the applause.
Mrs. Dean sat gazing into the glowing embers, her face lighted with quiet pleasure, but her knitting-needles twinkled and flashed in the firelight with the same unceasing regularity, and she doubled and seamed and "slipped and bound" her stitches with the same monotonous precision as on other evenings.
Mr. Britton, in a comfortable reclining-chair, sat silent, motionless, his head thrown back, his eyes nearly closed, but in the varying expression of his mobile face Darrell found both inspiration and compensation.
For more than three hours Darrell entertained his friends; quaint medleys, dreamy waltzes, and bits of classical music following one after another, with no effort, no hesitancy, on the part of the player. To their eager inquiries, he could only answer,—
"I don't know how I do it. They seem to come to
me with the sweep of the bow across the strings. I have no recollection of anything that I am playing; it seems as though the instrument and I were simply drifting."
Late in the evening, when they were nearly ready to separate for the night, Darrell sat idly strumming the violin, when an old familiar strain floated sweetly forth, and his astonished listeners suddenly heard him singing in a rich baritone an old love-song, forgotten until then by every one present.
Mrs. Dean had already laid aside her work and sat with hands folded, a smile of unusual tenderness hovering about her lips, while Mr. Britton's face was quivering with emotion. At its conclusion he grasped Darrell's hand silently.
"That is a very old song," said Mrs. Dean. "It seems queer to hear you sing it. I used to hear it sung when I was a young girl, and that," she added smiling, "was a great many years ago."