"David is a good boy—a very good boy, indeed, John. We think a great deal of him."
John Holly laughed lightly, yet his brow carried a puzzled frown. Two things John Holly had not been able thus far to understand: an indefinable change in his father, and the position of the boy David, in the household—John Holly was still remembering his own repressed youth.
"Hm-m," he murmured, softly picking the strings, then drawing across them a tentative bow. "I've a fiddle at home that I play sometimes. Do you mind if I—tune her up?"
A flicker of something that was very near to humor flashed from his father's eyes.
"Oh, no. We are used to that—now." And again John Holly remembered his youth.
"Jove! but he's got the dandy instrument here," cried the player, dropping his bow after the first half-dozen superbly vibrant tones, and carrying the violin to the window. A moment later he gave an amazed ejaculation and turned on his father a dumfounded face.
"Great Scott, father! Where did that boy get this instrument? I KNOW something of violins, if I can't play them much; and this—! Where DID he get it?"
"Of his father, I suppose. He had it when he came here, anyway."
"'Had it when he came'! But, father, you said he was a tramp, and—oh, come, tell me, what is the secret behind this? Here I come home and find calmly reposing on my father's sitting-room table a violin that's priceless, for all I know. Anyhow, I do know that its value is reckoned in the thousands, not hundreds: and yet you, with equal calmness, tell me it's owned by this boy who, it's safe to say, doesn't know how to play sixteen notes on it correctly, to say nothing of appreciating those he does play; and who, by your own account, is nothing but—" A swiftly uplifted hand of warning stayed the words on his lips. He turned to see David himself in the doorway.
"Come in, David," said Simeon Holly quietly. "My son wants to hear you play. I don't think he has heard you." And again there flashed from Simeon Holly's eyes a something very much like humor.