“‘Troth, they say so,’ answered she, calmly.
“‘I wonder he should dare!’ cried my mother. ‘I wonder he should not apprehend that the long residence in Egypt of Mr. Bruce, had made him so well acquainted with magic, that’—
“‘O,’ interrupted Mr. Bruce, coolly, ‘I shall not poison him. But I may bribe his servant to tie a rope across his staircase, on some dark night, and then, as I dare say the miserly wretch never allows himself a candle to go up and down stairs, he may get a tumble, and break his neck.’
“This idea set him into a fit of laughter quite merry to behold; and as I caught, from surprise, a little of its infection, he was again pleased to address himself to me, and to make inquiry whether I was musical; expressing his hopes that he should hear me play, when Mrs. Strange fulfilled her engagement of bringing him to our house; adding, that he had a passionate love of music.
“‘I was once,’ said Mrs. Strange, ‘with a young lady, a friend of mine, when she was at a concert for the first time she ever heard any music, except nursery lullabys, or street holla-balloos, or perhaps a tune on a fiddle by some poor blind urchin. And the music was very pretty, and quite tender; and she liked it so well, it almost made her swoon; and she could no’ draw her breath; and she thrilled all over; and sat sighing and groaning, and groaning and sighing, with over-much delight, till, at last, she burst into a fit of tears, and sobbed out, ‘I can’t help it!’
“‘There’s a woman,’ said Mr. Bruce, with some emotion, ‘who could never make a man unhappy! Her soul must be all harmony.’
“My dear father now arrived; and he and Mr. Bruce talked apart for the rest of the evening, upon the harp and the letter.
“But when the carriage was announced, imagine my surprise to see this majestic personage take it into his fancy to address something to me almost in a whisper! bending down, with no small difficulty, his head to a level with mine. What it was I could not hear. Though perhaps ’twas some Abyssinian compliment that I could not understand! It’s flattery, however, could not have done me much mischief, after Miss Strange’s information, that, when he is not disposed to be social with the company at large, he always singles out for notice the youngest female present—except, indeed, a dog, a bird, a cat, or a squirrel, be happily at hand.
“As I had no ‘retort courteous’ ready, he grandly re-erected himself to the fullest extent of his commanding height; setting me down, I doubt not, in his black book, for a tasteless imbecile. Every body, however, as all his motions engage all attention, looked so curious, that my only gratitude for his condescension, was heartily wishing him at one of the mouths of his own famous Nile.
“Will you not wish me there too, my dearest Mr. Crisp, for this long detail, without one word of said Nile, and its endless sources? or of Thebes and its hundred gates? or of the two harps of harps that are to decorate the History of Music? But nothing of all this occurred; except it might be in his private confab. with my father.