“Just one more, lady, to sleep on. That kind o’ music makes a feller hungry for more and sort-of-kind-of sets him thinkin’ ’bout things back home.”
But Mr. Ford interposed:
“No, Captain, not to-night! I want to have a lot of just such concerts so we mustn’t put the prima donna out of condition. But I’ve a little girl here with a fiddle and I tell you she can just make it talk! Come farther forward, Dolly dear, and stand close to me. Then ‘rosin your bow’ and get to work. Show these cowboys what a little girl-tenderfoot can do. Maybe, too, who knows? Maybe our Jim will hear it wherever he is and hurry back. At it, child, and call him!”
Lady Gray feared this was a trifle unkind to the girl, who she wished might wholly forget the boy, but the master felt it not so. He knew that nothing would more thoroughly inspire her than this possibility.
“Oh! do you think so? Then I’ll play as I never did before—I will, I will!”
She stepped out from the veranda upon the broad walk before it, and with the moonlight pouring down upon her white-clad little figure, her face uplifted to the sky, and her precious violin beneath her chin, she played, indeed, “as she had never done before.”
On and on she played; one ranchman after another softly suggesting some desired melody, and her eager little fingers rendering it upon the instant. The men ceased sprawling and sat up. If they had found the Gray Lady’s voice a marvel, here was a greater. That any child—a despised “female” child—could evoke such music seemed past belief; and when, at length, Mr. Ford bade her render the beloved “Home, Sweet Home” as a finale, there was a reluctant rising of the audience to its feet, ordered to it by the Captain who, in rather husky tones, stated:
“Ladies and gentlemen, and mostly the little gal, I give the sentiments o’ my regiment, to a man, when I say all you tenderfoots is welcome to S’ Leon. We wasn’t very tickled before, thinkin’ all our free livin’s an’ doin’s was to be interfered with, but we are now. Three cheers for the company an’ the treat they’ve give us, more especial for the Little One, and—Long may she wave! Hip, hip, hurrar!”
The cheer was given with a will, and then again came the Captain’s order:
“Fall into line. Right about face. March! hep, hep, hep—hep!”