While the girls were up in Molly’s room, which Judy was to share, getting ready for a belated dinner, they heard the sound of a piano, cracked but sweet, like the notes of an old spinnet, then a male voice, wonderful in its power and intensity, and at the same time so sweet and full of feeling that Judy, ever emotional where art was concerned, felt her eyes filling.
“Shed no tear, oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! Oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
Dry your eyes, oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,
Shed no tear.
“Overhead—look overhead
’Mong the blossoms white and red.
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this flush pomegranate bough.
See me! ’tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man’s ill.
Shed no tear, oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu—I fly. Adieu,
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,
Adieu, adieu!”
“Oh, Molly, Molly, who is that?” cried Judy, weeping copiously, in spite of the repeated request of the singer to “shed no tear.”
“Why, that is Crit. Isn’t his voice wonderful?”
“Do you really mean it is Mr. Rutledge? I thought he was dumb, and have been feeling so sorry for Mildred.”
“Dumb, indeed! He has the most beautiful voice in Kentucky, and can make such an eloquent speech when roused that we have been afraid he would go into politics. But, so far as passing the time of day is concerned, and the little chit-chat that fills up life, he is indeed as dumb as a fish. When he was a little boy he stammered and got into the habit of expressing his feelings in silence, and he can still do it. He had a teacher who cured him of stammering, but nothing will ever cure him of silence, unless he has something important to say, and then nothing can stop him. Mother tells of a man who stammered in talking but not in singing. One day he was passing a friend’s house, and saw that the roof was in a blaze, the inmates perfectly unconscious of the conflagration. He rushed in, tried to speak, could only stutter, and then in desperation burst into song. To the tune of ‘The Campbells Are Coming,’ he sang, ‘Your house is on fire, tra-la, tra-la!’ Kent declares that Crit proposed to Milly in song, but Milly herself is dumb about how that came about.”
“Well, anyhow, I have never heard such scintillating silence as his, and I think that Milly ought to be a very proud and happy girl.”
CHAPTER III.—WEDDING PREPARATIONS AND CONFIDENCES.
The next two weeks were busy ones for all the Brown household: first and foremost, the ever-crying need of clothes to be answered; second, the old house to be put in apple-pie order; all the furniture rubbed and rubbed some more; the beautiful old floors waxed and polished until they shone and reflected the newly scrubbed white paint in a way Judy thought most romantic. (But Judy thought everything was romantic those days.) She was “itching to help,” and help she did in many ways. Molly would not let her rub furniture or wax floors, but she had the pleasure of hanging the freshly laundered curtains all over the house, and she was received with joy in the sewing room by Miss Lizzie Monday, the neighborhood seamstress. Miss Lizzie was of the opinion that the Browns thought entirely too much about food and not nearly enough about clothes. Indeed it was a failing of the mother, if failing she had, to have good food, no matter at what cost, and then, since strict economy had to be practiced somewhere, to practice it on the clothes.