That, she thought, was all Aunt Adela wanted.... She hated having her room overhauled.... But, after all, what did it matter—what did anything matter now-a-days, with Justin away at the front ... fighting?...
She wondered if he had liked his parcel....
She wondered if he were still alive....
“What did you say, Auntie? Oh, I see. Oh—perfectly disgraceful—I should give her notice——”
She pushed back her hair. Her back ached. She felt very tired. She wanted to get back to Gran’papa. She could hear the thin scrape of his bow, and the fiddle’s stray uncertain notes as he tuned it. And then, suddenly, swiftly, joyously, it broke into the thrice-familiar tune—
Duncan Gray cam’ here to woo,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
On blythe yule night when we were fou,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
She knew the words by heart, in the unintelligent fashion in which one knows the words of a song. But today they caught her ear, rang in her mind to the staccato of the fiddle, significant, suggestive.