"Say, I'd like to see a melodeon. Just the very name of it makes me think of lovely sounds, religious sounds, mountin' higher and higher and swellin' out grander and grander, rollin' right into the great white throne, and shakin' the streets of gold. Do you know the 'Holy City,'" she asked after a pause.
The Englishman began to hum it in a rich tenor.
"That's it, you bet," she cried delightedly. "Just think of you coming all the way across the ocean and knowing that just the same as we do. I used to listen at the keyhole when Mrs. Francis had company, and I was there helping Camilla. Dr. Clay sang that lots of times."
The Englishman had not sung since he had left his father's house. He began to sing now, in a sweet, full voice, resonant on the quiet evening air, the cows staring idly at him. The old dog came down to the bars with his bristles up, expecting trouble.
Old Sam and his son Tom coming in from work stopped to listen to these strange sounds.
"Confound them English!" old Sam said. "Ye'd think I was payin' him to do that, and it harvest-time, too!"
When Dr. Clay, with Danny Watson gravely perched beside him, drove along the river road after saying good-bye to Pearl, they met Miss Barner, who had been digging ferns for Mrs. McGuire down on the river flat.
The doctor drew in his horse.
"Miss Barner," he said, lifting his hat, "if Daniel Mulcahey Watson and I should ask you to come for a drive with us, I wonder what you would say?"
Miss Barner considered for a moment and then said, smiling: