“Right, lad!” said Strings, musingly, as he lifted the old viol close against his cheek and tenderly picked it. “The old fiddle is true to me yet, though there is but one string left to its dear old neck.” There was a sob in his voice as he spoke. “I tell you, a fiddle’s human, Dick! It laughs at my jokes alone now; it weeps at my sorrows.” He sighed deeply and the tears glistened in his eyes. “The fiddle is the only friend left me and the little ones at home now, my lad.”
“–And Dick!” the boy suggested, somewhat hurt. He too was weeping. “It’s a shame; that’s what it is!” he broke out, indignantly. “Tompkins can’t play the music like you used to, Strings.”
“Oons!” exclaimed the fiddler, the humour in his nature bubbling again to the surface. “It’s only now and then the Lord has time to make a fiddler, Dickey, my boy.”
As he spoke, the greenroom shook with the rounds of applause from the pit and galleries without.
“Hurrah!” he shouted, following Dick to the stage-door–his own sorrows melting before the sunshine of his joy at the success of his favourite. “Nell has caught them with the epilogue.” He danced gleefully about, entering heartily into the applause and totally forgetful of the fact that he was on dangerous ground.
Dick was more watchful. “Manager Hart’s coming!” he exclaimed in startled voice, fearful for the welfare of his friend.
Strings collapsed. “Oh, Lord, let me be gone,” he said, as he remembered the bitter quarrel he had had with the manager of the King’s House, which ended in the employment of Tompkins. He did not yearn for another interview; for Hart had forbidden him the theatre on pain of whipping.
“Where can you hide?” whispered Dick, woefully, as the manager’s voice indicated that he was approaching the greenroom, and that too in far from the best of humour.
“Behind Richard’s throne-chair! It has held sinners before now,” added the fiddler as he glided well out of sight.
Dick was more cautious. In a twinkling, he was out of the door which led to the street.