"That's it, miss," he said then; "I can't mistake it; for, the minute you began, there was the old gentleman again with his fiddle."
"And you know now what it says, don't you?" asked Mary.
"I heard nothing but the old gentleman," answered the musician.
Mary turned to Tom.
"Would you mind if I tried to show Mr. Jasper what I see in the poem? He can't get a hold of it himself for the master's violin in his ears; it won't let him think about it."
"I should like myself to hear what you have got to say about it, Mary! Go on," said Tom.
Mary had now for a long time been a student of George Herbert; and anything of a similar life-experience goes infinitely further, to make one understand another, than any amount of learning or art. Therefore, better than many a poet, Mary was able to set forth the scope and design of this one. Herself at the heart of the secret from which came all his utterance, she could fit herself into most of the convolutions of the shell of his expression, and was hence able also to make others perceive in his verse not a little of what they were of themselves unable to see.
"We shall have you lecturing at the Royal Institution yet, Mary," said Tom; "only it will be long before its members care for that sort of antique."
Tom's insight had always been ahead of his character, and of late he had been growing. People do grow very fast in bed sometimes. Also he had in him plenty of material, to which a childlike desire now began to give shapes and sequences.
The musician's remark consisted in taking his violin, and once more giving his idea of the "old gentleman's" music, but this time with a richer expression and fuller harmonies. Mary had every reason to be satisfied with her experiment. From that time she talked a good deal more about her favorite writers, and interested both the critical taste of Tom and the artistic instinct of the blacksmith.