"It is a secret, but not a little one, nor pretty either. It is about Starwood. I don't think I ought to trouble you about it, and yet I must tell you, because I think you can do anything you please."
"Like a prince in the Arabian tales," he answered brightly; "I fear I am poor in comparison with such, for I can only help in one way."
"And that one way is the very way I want, sir. Starwood loves the pianoforte. I have seen him change all over when he talked of it, as if it were his real life. It is not a real life he lives with that violin."
"I wish it had been thyself, whose real life it is, my child," he replied, with a tenderness I could ill brook, could less account for; "but still thy wish shall be mine. Would the little one go with me? He seems terrified to be spoken to, and it would make my heart beat to flutter him."
"Sir, that is just like you to say so; but I am very certain he would soon love you,—not as I do, that would be impossible, but so much that you would not be sorry you had taken him away. But oh! if I had known that you would take and teach, I would never have taken up the violin, but have come and thrown myself at your feet, sir, and have held upon you till you promised to take me. I thought, sir, somehow that you did not teach."
"Understand me, then, that what I say I say to satisfy you: you are better as you are, better than you could be with me. I am a wanderer, and it is not my right to teach; I am bound to another craft, and the only one for the perfecting of which it is not my right to call myself poor. Do you understand, Charles?"
"I think, sir, that you mean you make music, and that therefore you have no time for the dirty work."
He broke into a burst of laughter, like joy-bells. "There is as much dirty work, however, in what you call making music. But what I meant for you to understand was this, that I do not take money for instructing; because that would be to take the bread from the mouths of hundreds I love and honor. I have money enough; and you know how sweet it is even to give money,—how much sweeter to give what cannot be bought by money! I shall take this little friend of mine to my own home, if he will go and I am permitted to do so; and I shall treat him as my son, because he will, indeed, be my music-child, and no more indebted to me than I am to music, or than we all are to Jehovah."
"Sir, you are certainly a Jew if you say 'Jehovah;' I was quite sure of it before, and I am so pleased."
"I cannot contradict thee, but I am almost sorry thou knowest there are even such people as Jews."