Yet, with all its uncertainty, the fiddler's touch groped for the beauty and pathos of the chords:
"Darling, I am growing old,
Silver threads among the gold."
Janice heard the haunting sweetness of the tune all the way down the shaded lane and she wondered who the player might be.
There was a deep, grass-grown ditch on one side—evidently an open drain to carry the overflow of water from High Street. As the drain deepened toward the bottom of the hill, posts had been set and rails laid on top of them to defend vehicles from pitching into the ditch in the dark. But many of the rails had now rotted and fallen to the sod, or the nails had rusted and drawn out, leaving the barrier "jest rattling."
From a side road there suddenly trotted a piebald pony, drawing a low, basket phaeton, in which sat two prim, little, old ladies, a fat one and a lean one. Despite the difference in their avoirdupois the two old ladies showed themselves to be what they were—sisters.
The thin one was driving the piebald pony. "Gidap, Ginger!" she announced, flapping the reins.
She had better have refrained from waking up Ginger just at that moment. A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the printed sheet, heaved it into the air.
Ginger caught a glimpse of the fluttering paper. He halted suddenly, with all four feet braced and ears forward, fairly snorting his surprise. As the paper began flopping across the road, he began to back. The whites of his eyes showed plainly and he snorted again. The wind-shaken paper utterly dissipated the pony's corn-fed complacency.
"Oh! Oh! Gidap!" shrieked the thin old lady.
"He—he's backin' us into the ditch, Pussy," cried her sister.