“Oh, how delightful it is here!” Jackey cried; “and now, my dear Fiddle, teach me to imitate all these sweet sounds.”
The violin told him how to hold the bow and where to place his fingers; and all the birds came round him, first one whistling a note till he could imitate it, and then another giving him the next note, and so on; the rivulet, too, and the wind assisted; and then came the nightingale and taught him how to join the different notes together, that they might harmonize and form sounds agreeable to the ear.
Jackey was so attentive, and did all so well, that the trees, the flowers, the stream, and all the birds cried out—
“Bravo, Jackey!”
As soon as evening began to draw near Jackey put up his fiddle and prepared to go home, when all the voices, with one accord, cried—
“Come again soon, and we will sing together.”
Jackey went the very next day, and every succeeding day, and he made the flowers join in the universal harmony. His dear fiddle seconded him in all his endeavours, so that very shortly he imitated all the voices of the forest with the greatest accuracy.
It happened about this time that the landlord of the village inn died, leaving a widow, who wished for nothing better than to give him a successor as speedily as possible; but though she was rich, and the business most thriving, yet no suitors appeared.
Jackey’s father, in his drunken moments, thought he would propose to the widow, for he said to himself that, when master of the inn, he could have as much drink as he liked without paying for it; but when a little more sober his courage failed him, for she was the veriest shrew, and the charms of her person were no more engaging than those of her character.
Her hair was neither red, brown, nor black, but a sort of dirty coloured mixture of the three, and each hair seemed to go a different way. Her nose was very, very long, not projecting, but hanging down, like the beak of some of the small tribes of parrots. I think the love-birds have such beaks, but I can scarcely compare her to those, for certainly she had nothing of the love about her. Well, her nose, anyhow, was like a parrot’s beak, but flattened down, and that on one side, or else it would have covered her mouth, which would have been no great harm, for that was as ugly a feature as any other, and not improved by having only half the due number of teeth, which, unlike the nose, stuck out instead of hanging down. Her eyes were like those of a cat, and one squinted awfully. Shaggy eyebrows and a pointed hairy chin complete her portrait. Her figure was long, lank, and shapeless—shapeless not meaning no shape at all, but an ugly shape.