'Then of course I took to it, like a duck to water, and it began to scare him that I loved it so much. He and Catherine only loved religion, and us, and the poor. So he always took it away on Sundays. Then I hated Sundays, and would never be good on them. One Sunday I cried myself nearly into a fit on the dining-room floor because I mightn't have it. Then he came in, and he took me up, and he tied a Scotch plaid round his neck, and he put me into it, and carried me away right up on to the hills, and he talked to me like an angel. He asked me not to make him sad before God that he had given me that violin; so I never screamed again—on Sundays!
Her companion's eyes were not quite as clear as before.
'Poor little naughty child' he said, bending over to her. 'I think your father must have been a man to be loved.'
She looked at him, very near to weeping, her face all working with a soft remorse.
'Oh, so he was—so he was! If he had been hard and ugly to us, why, it would have been much easier for me; but he was so good! And there was Catherine just like him, always preaching to us what he wished. You see what a chain it's been—what a weight! And as I must struggle—must, because I was I—to get back into the world on the other side of the mountains, and do what all the dear wicked people there were doing, why, I have been a criminal all my life! And that isn't exhilarating always.'
And she raised her arm and let it fall beside her with the quick over-tragic emotion of nineteen.
'I wish your father could have heard you play as I heard you play yesterday,' he said gently.
She started.
'Did you hear me—that Wagner?'