"Music waves eternal wands."
THE days went by pleasantly for the school-master, who became more and more interested in Martha's struggle for an education. He spent many of his evenings in directing her studies or in reading to her, and Martha showed her gratitude in a score of ways. Pearl was delighted with the turn events had taken, and before the month of January had gone declared that she could see results. Martha was learning.
There was one other person in the neighbourhood who was taking an interest in Martha's case and was determined to help it along, and that was Dr. Emeritus Emory, the music-teacher of the Souris valley.
Dr. Emory was a mystery, a real, live, undiscoverable mystery. All that was really known of him was that he had come from England several years before and worked as an ordinary farm-hand with a farmer at the Brandon Hills. He was a steady, reliable man, very quiet and reticent. That he knew anything about music was discovered quite by accident one day when the family for whom he worked were all away to a picnic and "Emer" was left to mind the house. One of the neighbour's boys came over to borrow a neck-yoke. "Emer," glad to be alone in the house, was in the parlour playing the piano. The neighbour's boy knocked and knocked at the back door, but got no response. Finally he went around to the front and looked in the window to see who was playing the piano, and there sat "Emer" "ripplin' it off by the yard," the boy said afterward, "the smashin'est band music you ever heard."
Soon after that "Emer" left the plough, and Dr Emeritus Emory began to teach music to the young people of the neighbourhood and of the neighbourhoods beyond, for he was fond of long walks and thought nothing of twenty miles in a day. His home was where night found him, and, being of a genial, kindly nature, he was a welcome guest at many a fireside.
The music-teacher's reticence regarding his own affairs exasperated some of the women. There was no human way of finding out who he was or why he left home. Mrs. George Steadman once indignantly exclaimed, speaking of Dr. Emory,—"You can't even tell if he's married, or if she's livin'. Maybe she is, for all we know. He never gets no mail. George went and asked."
Dr. Emory was equally silent on the happenings at the houses at which he stayed. Mrs. Steadman pointed out to Mrs. Motherwell that "if the old lad wanted he could be real chatty, instead of sittin' around singin' his little fiddlin' toons. Here last week when he came to give Maudie her lesson he came straight from Slater's, and I was just dyin' to know if they was gettin' ready for Edith's weddin'. We heard it had been put off, and so I asked him out straight if he saw much sewin' around. 'They were sewin' onion seed,' says he. He seems kinda stoopid sometimes. But I says to him, makin' it as plain as I could, 'I mean, did ye see any sewin' around the house, did ye see anything in the line of sewin?' because I know people often put it away, but if he was half smart he'd see the bastin' threads or somethin', so I says, 'Did you see anythin' like sewin?' 'Just the sewin'-machine,' says he, thinkin' hard. 'I remember distinctly seein' it.' Then I just got my dander up, for I was determined to know about it, and I knew very well he c'ud tell me if he'd a mind to. I says, 'Do ye think Edith is gittin' ready to be married?' and says he, real solemn like—I thought for sure he was goin' to tell me somethin'—says he, 'Mrs. Steadman, I believe every girl is gittin' ready for her weddin' sometime. Maudie here is doin' an ocean-wave huckaback cushion now, I see. What's that for, I wonder? I suppose Edith Slater is gittin' ready. I don't see why she shouldn't,' and then he began to lilt a little foreign toon, and I was good and mad, I can tell ye; but ye can't get nothin' out, of him. He gits his livin' pretty easy, too, and he ought to be a little chatty, I think."
Dr. Emeritus Emory was not so engrossed in his profession as to be insensible to a good square meal and a well-kept room to sleep in, and so a chart of his peregrinations through the neighbourhood, with the meal-stations starred, would have been a surer guide to the good bread and butter makers than the findings of the Agricultural Society which presumed every year at the "Show Fair" to pick the winners, and any young man looking for a wife would make no mistake if he "followed the stars."
Dr. Emory seldom passed the Perkins home without stopping, and although he had no pupil there since Edith left, he almost invariably planned his pilgrimage so as to be there about nightfall, for a good supper, bed, and breakfast and a warm welcome were not to be passed by.
If the music-teacher's way of getting his board and lodging was unique, he had also his own system of getting his laundry work done. Like all systems, it had its limitations; it required a certain understanding on the part of the lady of the house. This sometimes did not exist, and so it happened that the pair of stockings or the underwear that he left, quite by accident, in the room he had occupied were returned to him on his next visit, neatly wrapped in newspaper, but otherwise unchanged in condition.