"A violinist!"
"Hush! Please don't tell."
"Of course I'll not tell, but——"
"Have you heard him play?"
"Joyselle? Of course I have."
"Well?" asked Tommy in quiet triumph. What more could anyone say?
The old woman smiled sweetly at him. She, too, had been young, and remembered. And there was in this little, plain boy a certain strain of blood that she loved; his grandmother had been a Yeoland.
"So you really love it that much, do you? It means hard work, Tommy."
"I know," nodded the boy gravely.
And his mother, seeing his gravity, feared that he was not being sufficiently quaint to amuse the old lady, and screamed down the table at him to tell the Duchess the story of the jibbing pony at the Irish race meeting. The story was not told.