Mrs. Benham did not repeat her question again. She saw, as she glanced at her husband's face, that it would be of no use, for she saw that just for the present he was all absorbed in the delight that had come to him, in the successful accomplishment of his undertaking. This was joy enough for him at the moment. He had often said to her when she had advised him not to tire himself out pottering over things that might not bring him a penny, that he loved the work for itself, independent of anything else. And it was the work that he was thinking of now, not the possible financial results. But by and by—and Mrs. Benham's thoughts went wandering off into that by and by, when these results would take tangible form. Her ideas, however, were extremely modest. This fortune that she had in her mind, that she saw before her at that instant, was very limited. Harry Richards, an old friend of her husband's, had made a comfortable little sum out of an improvement upon car-window fastenings, and it was some such comfortable little sum that Mrs. Benham was thinking of. A little sum that would be sufficient, perhaps, to pay at once what mortgage there was still left upon their little home, to buy a new carpet for the parlor, and the books her husband needed, and to give Hope all the instruction she wanted upon the violin, from Mr. Kolb, or any other teacher, at the teacher's price.
Just at this point of her thought, a quick, flying step was heard, and a quick, humming voice,—a little sweet, thready sound, as near like a violin tone as the owner could make it,—and the next minute Hope appeared in the workshop rosy and radiant.
"Mr. Kolb says," she broke out, dropping her humming violin note, "that I shall make a very good little fiddler some day if I 'haf patience,'" gayly imitating the old German's pronunciation. "He says—" But something in her father's absorbed attitude, in her mother's expression, stopped her. "What is it? what has happened?" she inquired, looking from one to the other.
"Your father has got the little engine all right."
"It does just what he wanted it to do?" asked Hope, eagerly.
"Yes, just what he wanted it to do."
Hope danced about the room, humming her little thready violin note. Her father, roused from his reverie, looked up at her, and smiled.
"Well, Hope, the little fiddle was a success, eh?"
"And the little engine too;" and the girl danced up to her father, humming her note of gladness.
"Yes, the little engine too."