"I don't know, Charlie, if mamma would like it always," said Mabel. "She has such bad headaches, you know."
"Well; but up in the nursery she would hardly hear it, I'm sure," said Charlie, regretfully.
"I should so like to turn it," said Mabel, shyly looking up into Christie's face.
"All right, missie; come here," said Christie.
And standing on tip-toe at his side, little Mabel took hold of the handle of the organ with her tiny white hand. Very slowly and carefully she turned it, so slowly that her mamma came to the window to see if the organ-boy had been taken ill.
It was a pretty sight which that young mother looked upon. The little fair, delicate child, in her light summer dress, turning the handle of the old, faded barrel-organ, and the organ-boy standing by, watching her with admiring eyes. Then little Mabel looked up, and saw her mother's face at the window, and smiled and nodded to her, delighted to find that she was watching. And then Mabel went on playing with a happy consciousness that mother was listening. For there was no one in the world that little Mabel loved so much as her mother.
But Mabel turned so slowly that she grew tired of the melancholy wails of "Poor Mary Ann."
"Change it, please, organ-boy," she said; "make it play 'Home, sweet Home;' mother does like that so."
But Christie knew that "Rule Britannia" lay between them and "Home, sweet Home;" he took the handle from Mabel, and saying, brightly, "All right, missie, I'll make it come as quick as I can," he turned it round so fast, that if old Treffy had been within hearing, he would certainly have died from fright about his dear old organ long before the month was over. Several people in the opposite houses came to their windows to look out; they thought the organ must be possessed with some evil spirit, so slowly did it go one minute, so quickly the next.
But they understood how it was a minute afterwards when little Mabel again began to turn, and very slowly and deliberately the first notes of "Home, sweet Home," was sounded forth. She turned the handle of the organ until "Home, sweet Home," was quite finished, and then, with a sigh of satisfaction, she gave it up to Christie.