"Well?" said Simeon Holly, trying to speak with a steady coldness that would not show how deeply moved he was. "Well, Ellen?"
"Yes, Simeon, yes!" choked his wife, a world of mother-love and longing in her pleading eyes and voice. "Yes—you'll let it be—'Yes'!"
"Uncle Simeon, Aunt Ellen," called David, clattering down the stairs from his room, "I've found such a beautiful song in my violin, and I'm going to play it over and over so as to be sure and remember it for father—for it is a beautiful world, Uncle Simeon, isn't it? Now, listen!"
And Simeon Holly listened—but it was not the violin that he heard. It was the voice of a little curly-headed boy out of the past.
When David stopped playing some time later, only the woman sat watching him—the man was over at his desk, pen in hand.
John, John's wife, and John's boy came the day before Christmas, and great was the excitement in the Holly farmhouse. John was found to be big, strong, and bronzed with the outdoor life of many a sketching trip—a son to be proud of, and to be leaned upon in one's old age. Mrs. John, according to Perry Larson, was "the slickest little woman goin'." According to John's mother, she was an almost unbelievable incarnation of a long-dreamed-of, long-despaired-of daughter—sweet, lovable, and charmingly beautiful. Little John—little John was himself; and he could not have been more had he been an angel-cherub straight from heaven—which, in fact, he was, in his doting grandparents' eyes.
John Holly had been at his old home less than four hours when he chanced upon David's violin. He was with his father and mother at the time. There was no one else in the room. With a sidelong glance at his parents, he picked up the instrument—John Holly had not forgotten his own youth. His violin-playing in the old days had not been welcome, he remembered.
"A fiddle! Who plays?" he asked.
"David."
"Oh, the boy. You say you—took him in? By the way, what an odd little shaver he is! Never did I see a BOY like HIM." Simeon Holly's head came up almost aggressively.