Banjo put his bow in its place in the lid of the case, the rosin in its little box. But the fiddle he still held on his knee, stroking its smooth back with loving hand, as if he would soothe Mrs. Chadron’s regrets and longings and back-tugging pains by that vicarious caress. So he sat petting his instrument, and after a little she looked at him, her eyes red, and tear-streaks on her face.
“Don’t put it away just yet, Banjo,” she requested; “there’s another one I want you to sing, and that will be the last. It’s the saddest one you play—one that I couldn’t stand one time—do you remember?” Banjo remembered; he nodded. “I can stand it now, Banjo; I want to hear it now.”
Banjo drew bow again, no more words on either side, and began his song:
All o-lone and sad he left me,
But no oth-o’s bride I’ll be;
For in flow-os he bedecked me,
In tho cottage by tho sea.
When he finished, Mrs. Chadron’s head was bent upon her arm across the little workstand where her basket stood. Her shoulders were moving in piteous convulsions, but no sound of crying came from her. Banjo knew that it was the hardest kind of weeping that tears the human heart.
He put away his fiddle, and strapped the case. Then he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.