“Ah,” said one of the bachelors, “but his joy was sadder for us than his misery. Hear him now.”
“I think he means it for 'What's this dull town to me,'” observed another, with some rancor. “I would willingly make the town sufficiently exciting for him—”
“If there were not an ordinance against the hurling of missiles,” finished the widower.
The piano executing the funeral march ceased to execute, discomfited by the persistent and overpowering violin; the banjo and the coster-songs were given over; even the collegians' music was defeated; and the neighborhood was forced to listen to the dauntless fiddle, but not without protest, for there came an indignant, spoken chorus from the quarter whence the college songs had issued: “Ya-a-ay! Wetherford, put it away! She'll come back!” The violin played on.
“We all know each other here, you see, Mr. Harkless,” Miss Hinsdale smiled benignantly.
“They didn't bother Mr. Wetherford Swift,” said the widower. “Not that time. Do you hear him?—'Could ye come back to me, Douglas'?”
“Oh, but it isn't absence that is killing him and his friends,” cried one of the young women. “It is Brainard Macauley.”
“That is a mistake,” said Tom Meredith, as easily as he could. “There goes Jim's double quartette. Listen, and you will hear them try to——”
But the lady who had mentioned Brainard Macauley cried indignantly: “You try to change the subject the moment it threatens to be interesting. They were together everywhere until the day she went away; they danced and 'sat out' together through the whole of one country-club party; they drove every afternoon; they took long walks, and he was at the Sherwoods' every evening of her last week in town. 'That is a mistake!'”
“I'm afraid it looks rather bleak for Wetherford,” said the widower. “I went up to the 'Journal' office on business, one day, and there sat Miss Sherwood in Macauley's inner temple, chatting with a reporter, while Brainard finished some work.”