‘You are getting on, my boy,’ said the good Bohemian. ‘Can you come and see the piece to-night? Are you strong enough?’
‘Not to-night,’ Christopher returned. ‘In a day or two.’ And he went oh playing ‘Cruel ‘Barbara Allen’ dreamily.
‘What is that?’ said Rubach with a wry grin. ‘Is not twice or thrice of it enough?’
Christopher laid down the instrument with a smile. When Carl had left him he took it up again and played over to himself the songs Barbara used to sing. He was weak and could not play for any great length of time together, but he played every now and then a melody, and in a while he got back again to ‘Cruel Barbara Allen.’ Back came Carl as he played it.
‘That tune again? what is it?’
‘An old ballad,’ answered Christopher. “Cruel Barbara Allen.”’
He found a pleasure in speaking her name aloud in this veiled way.
‘Let the girl alone,’ said Carl. ‘I am tired of her.’
‘I am not,’ said Christopher with a weak little chuckle, ‘and I have known her since she was a child.’
He began to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with simulated theatric anger. But Carl’s treatment of the name of the ballad as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher a temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in Carl’s presence.