Rose shrank back. "O, I can't whistle before company; I learned on the farm, I was alone so much."
They fell upon her in entreaties, and at last she half promised.
"If you won't look at me—"
"Turn down the gas!" shouted Roberts.
They made the room dim. There was a little silence, and then into the room crept a keen little sweet piping sound. It broadened out into a clear fluting and entered upon an old dance tune. As she went on she put more and more go into it, till Roberts burst out with a long-drawn nasal cry, "Sash-ay all!" and Rose broke down into a laugh. Everybody shouted "Bravo!"
Roberts exulted. "O, but I'd like to see an old-fashioned country dance again. Give us another old-fashioned tune."
"I don't know that I do them right," said Rose. "I hear the fiddlers playing them."
"More! more!" cried Roberts. "I like those old things. Mason here pretends not to know them, but he's danced them many a time."
Rose whistled more of the old tunes. "Haste to the Wedding," "Honest John," "Polly Perkins," and at last reached some fantastic furious tunes, which she had caught from the Norwegian fiddlers.
Then she stopped and they turned up the light. She looked a little ashamed of her performance, and Isabel seemed to understand it, so she said: