“Her bright eyes!” said the Major, closing his own and kissing his hand.
“Her bright eyes!” cried everyone but the Adjutant, who growled out a malediction on somebody’s eyes.
Then the toast was drunk with three times three, there was the usual clattering of glasses as the gentlemen resumed their seats, and some of those who had paid most attention to the port began with tears in their eyes to expatiate on the charms of some special reigning beauty, receiving confidences of a like nature. Just then, the two instruments were brought and handed to the Colonel and Richard Linnell, a sneering titter going round the table, and a whisper about “fiddlers” making the latter flush angrily.
“Yes, gentlemen, fiddlers,” said Colonel Mellersh quietly; “and it requires no little skill to play so grand and old an instrument. I’ll take my note from you, Dick.”
Flushing more deeply with annoyance, Richard Linnell drew his bow across the A string, bringing forth a sweet pure note that thrilled through the room, and made one of the glasses ring.
“That’s right,” said the Colonel. “I wish your father were here. What’s it to be?”
“What you like,” said Linnell, whose eyes were wandering about the table, as if in search of the man who would dare to laugh and call him “fiddler” again.
“Something simple that we know.”
Linnell nodded.
“Ready, gentlemen,” said the Major, with a sneering look at Sir Harry Payne. “Silence, please, ye demons of the nether world. ‘Hark, the lute!’ No: that’s the wrong quotation. Now, Colonel—Mr Linnell, we are all attention.”