And when she sat down to play the light sparkled and glowed on her fair hair, making it look like gold.
Fergus too was getting a little tired of lying alone while his mother and Gratian made the tour of the gallery. So Andrew was called to wheel him back again to the other door of the library, from whence he could best hear the organ. It stood at one side of the large hall, in a recess which had probably been made on purpose. It was dark in the recess even at mid-day, and now the dusk was fast increasing, so the lady lit the candles fixed at each side of the music-desk, and when she sat down to play the light sparkled and glowed on her fair hair, making it look like gold.
Gratian touched Fergus.
"Doesn't it look pretty?" he said, pointing to the little island of light in the gloomy hall.
Fergus nodded.
"I always think mother turns into an angel when she plays," he said. "Now, let's listen, Gratian, and afterwards you can tell me what pictures the music makes to you, and I'll tell you what it makes to me."
The organ was old and rather out of repair, and Andrew was not very well used to blowing. That made it, I think, all the more wonderful that the lady could bring such music out of it. It was not so fine and perfect, doubtless, as what Gratian had heard from her in church on the Sunday afternoon, but still it was beautiful enough for him to think of nothing but his delight in listening. She played several pieces—some sad and plaintive, some joyful and triumphant, and then Gratian begged her to play the last he had heard at church.
"That is a good choice for our good-night one," she said. "It is a favourite of Fergus's too. He calls it his good-night hymn."
Fergus did not speak—he was lying with his eyes shut, in quiet happiness, and as the last notes died away, "Don't speak yet, Gratian," he said, "you don't know what I am seeing—flocks of birds are slowly flying out of sight, the sun has set, and one hears a bell in the distance ringing very faintly; one by one the lights are going out in the cottages that I see at the foot of the hill, and the night is creeping up. That is what I see when mother plays the good-night. What do you see, Gratian?"