A Nest of Linnets

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“You said the truth when you told me that his heart was there,” said she. “Yes, I can hear the poor thing wail to be released every time he draws his bow across the strings. You will come to see me at my lodgings, will you not, Mr. Sheridan?”

“I will wait until your heart is buried beside Tom’s within the frame of his fiddle; ’twere not safe else,” cried Dick. “Hasten to your Abbey, or you will miss even the Blessing.”

“Meantime, you will think out an epitaph to scratch into the varnish of the violin.”

“A simple Resurgam will do, for, by the Lord Harry, your heart will not rest long in one place, you beautiful creature!” cried Dick, standing with his hat in his hand while the roof of the chair was lowered on its hinges, and the chairmen went off with their fair burden.

Dick made up his mind that he would be in no haste to visit her at her lodgings. She had made him somewhat afraid of her two nights before, when she had lapsed into sincerity in the Assembly Rooms, and he had not yet come to regard her as free from any element of danger to his peace of mind. He felt, however, that he had accused her wrongfully of the butterfly quality of fickleness: nearly forty-eight hours had passed since she had thought it worth while to captivate Tom Linley, and yet it seemed that she was still faithful to him.

But why should she think it worth her while to captivate Tom Linley?

Dick thought out this question while walking to Mr. Long’s house, and before he pulled the bell he had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Abington was merely adapting to her own purposes the advice which Angelo, the fencing-master, was accustomed to give to his pupils. “Have a bout with the foils every day of your life, if only for ten minutes with your little brother in the nursery,” was the advice which Angelo gave to pupils when urging on them the need to keep in constant practice. Yes, Mrs. Abington must have heard him say that.

Tom Linley represented the young brother in the nursery. That was all very well, so long as the fencing was done with foils; but it would be an act of cruelty for an accomplished fencer to introduce rapiers into the nursery. He hoped that little brother Tom would come unscathed out of the encounter which represented to Mrs. Abington nothing more than a laudable desire to keep her hand in.

Dick found Mr. Long alone in his sitting-room. His left hand was rather more elaborately bandaged than it had been when Dick had seen it last. But Mr. Long assured him that the wounds were quite trifling—mere scratches, in fact, scarcely asking for the attention of a surgeon, although his valet had on his own responsibility called in an excellent young man, who could be trusted to do as little as possible to the wounds and so give them a chance of healing speedily, and who also could be trusted to hold his tongue in regard to the occurrence.

“I have been using the cudgel on my brains all the morning trying to invent some plausible excuse for carrying a bandaged hand for a day or two,” said Mr. Long; “but up to the present I cannot boast of the result. My dull ass will not mend his pace by beating. Can you come to my help in this matter, as you did in the matter that placed me in need of such a story? Come, Mr. Sheridan, you are a man of imagination and resource.”