THE WRONG HOUSE
When Adam strayed
In Eden's bow'rs,
One little maid
Amused his hours.
He fell! But, friend,
I leave to you
Where he'd have dropped
Had there been two!
—Paradise Rehypothecated.
"Now, Florian," said Judge Blodgett, as they sat in Amidon's rooms, "search yourself, and see if you don't feel a dreamy sense of familiarity here in these rooms—the feeling that the long-lost heir has when he crawls down the chimney as a sweep and finds himself in his ancestral halls, you know."
"Never saw a thing here before," said Amidon, "and have no feeling except surprise at the elegance about me, and a sneaking fear that Brassfield may come in at any time and eject us. The fellow had taste, anyhow!"
"Didn't you recognize anything," went on the judge, "in the streets or buildings or the general landscape?"
"Nothing."
"Nor in the young lady? Wasn't there a sort of—of music in her voice, like long-forgotten melodies, you understand—like what the said heir notices in after years when his mother blunders on to him?"
"Well," said Florian, "her voice is musical, if that's what you mean—musical and low, and reminds one of the sounds made by a great master playing his heart out in the lowest notes of the flute; but it is so far from being familiar to me that I'm quite sure I never heard a voice like it before."
The judge strode up and down the room perturbedly.
"Why," said he, "it's enough to make a man's hair stand!"