"How do you feel now? Stronger, I know by your mouth; there's color in the lips now," said the young man, who had taken a leading interest in the stranger from the first.
"Oh! yes, I am much stronger," answered the youth, with one of the sweetest smiles that ever beamed on a human face. "A little fresh water now, and you shall see if I haven't music in the old violin."
"Come this way. The water-trough is out by the back porch."
The youth took up his violin, saying very gently that he never left that behind him, and following the lead of his friend glided from the room.
After bathing his hands and face, leaving them pure and white as those of a girl, he went back to the porch, and seating himself in uncle Nat's arm-chair, drew forth his violin and began to tune it.
Uncle Nat was just returning the spigot to his cider barrel, after having filled the brown pitcher once more to the brim; but at the first sound of the violin, an instrument he had not heard for years, the spigot dropped to the floor, and out rushed the cider in a quick amber stream, overflowing the pitcher, dashing down to the floor, and rushing off in a tiny river the sloping edge of the porch. You could hear it creeping in a rich current through the plaintain leaves, while uncle Nat stood quite oblivious of the waste, listening like a great school boy to the violin.
An exclamation from Salina, who had just left her friends in the dressing-room, as she came forth and seized the pitcher, brought the good old man to his senses. Clapping his fat hand over the aperture, he drove the cider back in the cask, and looked right and left over his shoulder for the spigot, avoiding the scornful eyes of that exemplary female, who stood with the pitcher between her hands, over which the surplus moisture went dripping, like an antiquated Hebe defying an overgrown Ganymede.
"There!" exclaimed the strong-minded damsel, pointing toward the spigot with her foot, "there's at least two gallons of the best cider in the county gone to nothing. What do you think aunt Hannah will do for apple sauce, if you go on this way, making regular mill-dams out of her sweet cider?"
"Maybe we'd better say nothing about it," answered uncle Nat, making futile efforts to restrain the cider with one hand and reach the spigot with the other, "dear me, I can't reach it. Now, dear Miss Salina, if you only would."
"Dear Miss Salina!" The strong-minded one turned at the words, blushing till her face rivalled those fiery tresses. She sat down her pitcher, shook the drops from her fingers, and seizing the important bit of pine presented it to uncle Nathan.