"Tid you oxamine te neck? See how it lays in te hand! Tid you ever see neck like dat? No, you don't see it, never," in a positive tone, looking at us again over the silver rims of his spectacles.
Bob took the violin in his hand. It was evidently an old one and of peculiar shape. The swells and curves of the sides and back were delicately rounded and highly finished. The neck, too, to which the man pointed, was smooth and remarkably graceful, like the stem of an old meerschaum pipe, and as richly colored.
Bob handled it critically, scrutinizing every inch of its surface—he adores a Cremona as some souls do a Madonna—then he walked with it to the window.
"Why, this has been mended!" he exclaimed in surprise and with a trace of anger in his voice. "This is a new neck put on!"
I knew by the tone that Bob was beginning now to see through the game.
"Ah, you vind day oud, do you? Tat is a new neck, sure, ant a goot von, put on py Simon Corunden—not Auguste!—Simon! It is better as efer."
I looked for the guileless, innocent expression with the regulation smile that distinguishes most vagabonds on an errand like this, but his lifeless face was unlit by any visible emotion.
Drawing the old red handkerchief from his pocket in a tired, hopeless way, he began twisting it about the violin again.
"Play something on it," said Bob. He evidently believed every word of the impromptu explanation, and was weakening again. Harrowing sighs—chronic for years—or trickling tears shed at the right moment by some grief-stricken woman never failed to deceive him.
"No, I don't blay. I got no heart inside of me to blay," with a weary movement of his hand. He was now tucking the frayed ends of the handkerchief under the strings.