“Yes, but what I mean is, would you like me better if I could speak like other people?”
“No, it does not make any difference in that way, Kilmeny. By the way, do you mind my calling you Kilmeny?”
She looked puzzled and wrote, “What else should you call me? That is my name. Everybody calls me that.”
“But I am such a stranger to you that perhaps you would wish me to call you Miss Gordon.”
“Oh, no, I would not like that,” she wrote quickly, with a distressed look on her face. “Nobody ever calls me that. It would make me feel as if I were not myself but somebody else. And you do not seem like a stranger to me. Is there any reason why you should not call me Kilmeny?”
“No reason whatever, if you will allow me the privilege. You have a very lovely name—the very name you ought to have.”
“I am glad you like it. Do you know that I was called after my grandmother and she was called after a girl in a poem? Aunt Janet has never liked my name, although she liked my grandmother. But I am glad you like both my name and me. I was afraid you would not like me because I cannot speak.”
“You can speak through your music, Kilmeny.”
She looked pleased. “How well you understand,” she wrote. “Yes, I cannot speak or sing as other people can, but I can make my violin say things for me.”
“Do you compose your own music?” he asked. But he saw she did not understand him. “I mean, did any one ever teach you the music you played here that evening?”