"Well, I did! I got a pipe for my father,—oh, a beauty!—meerschaum, of course, carved with a head of Schumann, the most perfect likeness! Hilda, when the smoke comes out of it, you expect to hear it sing the 'Davidsbündler,' one after another. Of course anybody except Schumann would have been ridiculous, but it seems to suit him. Then for Uncle Tom—a pipe is horror to him, of course—I got a walking-stick, ebony, with no end of a Turk's head on it. He hates the Turks so, you know. I knew he would enjoy squeezing it, and rapping it up against things, and he does like it, I think. And then—" the boy began to fumble in his pockets, blushing with eagerness—"Mrs. Grahame, I—I saw this in a shop, and—it made me think of you. Will you put it somewhere, please, where you will see it now and then, and—and think of me?"
The tiny parcel he held out was wrapped in folds of soft, foreign-looking paper. Mrs. Grahame, opening it, found an exquisite little copy of the Nuremburg Madonna, the sweetest and tenderest figure of motherhood and gracious womanliness.
"My dear boy!" she said, much moved. "What a beautiful, beautiful thing! Is it really mine? How can I thank you enough?"
"So glad you like it! Is it right, Hilda?"
"Quite right," said Hilda; and they nodded and smiled at each other, while the mother bent over her treasure, absorbed in its beauty.
"And you, Hilda!" said Jack, searching his pockets again. "Do you suppose I have anything for you? Do you really suppose I had time to stop and think about you?"
The boy was in such a glow of happiness, the joy so rippled and shone from him, that Hildegarde could not take her eyes from his face.
"Dear fellow!" she said. "As if I needed anything but just the sight of you, and the sound of your—fiddle! And yet,—oh, Jack! Jack! How could you? How could you let yourself do it?"
Jack had put something into her hands, and was now leaning back in perfect content, watching her face in turn, and delighted with every light that danced over it. The something was a bracelet; a little, shining garland of stars, each star a cluster of "aquamarine" stones, clear as crystal, with the faintest, most delicate shade of green, hardly seen in the full light. Not a jewel of great value, but as pretty a thing as ever a girl saw.
"Jack!" sighed Hilda again. "How could you? There never was anything so beautiful in the world; that is confessed."