"There's a string gone, and that'll be sixpence to save up before we can have another singing night," remarked Winnie, ruefully, as a slight snap from the violin announced the mischief that had been done.
Nessa advanced from the window, and suggested that perhaps the string would be long enough to be used again.
"Are you there?" exclaimed Winnie, taking up the violin. "No; it's the same string that broke last time. Myrrh, I do wish you wouldn't pitch the violin about so; couldn't you remember to give it to me every time instead of throwing it down?"
"Especially," remarked Rosie, who had come in with Bobbo, "when it's all your fault. If you practised every day the way you promised mamma, you'd never make those horrid squeaks."
"Shut up!" said Murtagh, flinging himself down on the hearth-rug.
Winnie hovered about, watching Nessa's useless endeavors to make a short string long enough, and finally settled down upon the hearth-rug; while Rosie remarked that she was going to bed, and went away.
"You'll be throwing it in the river by mistake some of these nights, Murtagh," said Bobbo, "and that'll be an awful nuisance."
"Don't bother him!" said Winnie. "We are so tired."
"I'm sick and tired of everything," exclaimed Murtagh, presently. "Everything's wrong, whatever you do; I think I'd like to be nice and quietly dead, then things wouldn't be all so puzzling."
"I'm so tired now," said Winnie, wearily laying her head on a footstool, "that I think I'd like to be dead or anything where you don't feel."