“No, thank you,” sais I, “it’s only a Highlander can make music out of that.”
“She never said a wiser word tan tat,” he replied, much gratified.
“Now,” sais I, “let me blow this, does it take much wind?”
“No,” said Jackson, “not much, try it, Sir.”
“Well, I put it to my lips, and played a well-known air on it. “It’s not hard to play, after all, is it, Jackson?”
“No, Sir,” said he, looking delighted, “nothing is ard to a man as knows how, as you do.”
“Tom,” sais Betty, “don’t that do’ee good? Oh, Sir, I ain’t eard that since I left the hold country, it’s what the guards has used to be played in the mail-coaches has was. Oh, Sir, when they comed to the town, it used to sound pretty; many’s the time I have run to the window to listen to it. Oh, the coaches was a pretty sight, Sir. But them times is all gone,” and she wiped a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron, a tear that the recollection of early days had called up from the fountain of her heart.
Oh, what a volume does one stray thought of the past contain within itself. It is like a rocket thrown up in the night. It suddenly expands into a brilliant light, and sheds a thousand sparkling meteors, that scatter in all directions, as if inviting attention each to its own train. Yes, that one thought is the centre of many, and awakens them all to painful sensibility. Perhaps it is more like a vivid flash of lightning, it discloses with intense brightness the whole landscape, and exhibits, in their minutest form and outline, the very leaves and flowers that lie hid in the darkness of night.
“Jessie,” said I, “will you imitate it?”
I stopt to gaze on her for a moment—she stood in the doorway—a perfect model for a sculptor. But oh, what chisel could do justice to that face—it was a study for a painter. Her whole soul was filled with those clear beautiful notes, that vibrated through the frame, and attuned every nerve, till it was in harmony with it. She was so wrapt in admiration, she didn’t notice what I observed, for I try in a general way that nothing shall escape me; but as they were behind us all, I just caught a glimpse of the doctor (as I turned my head suddenly) withdrawing his arm from her waist. She didn’t know it, of course, she was so absorbed in the music. It ain’t likely she felt him, and if she had, it ain’t probable she would have objected to it. It was natural he should like to press the heart she had given him; wasn’t it now his? and wasn’t it reasonable he should like to know how it beat? He was a doctor, and doctors like to feel pulses, it comes sorter habitual to them, they can’t help it. They touch your wrist without knowing it, and if it is a woman’s, why their hand, like brother Josiah’s cases that went on all fours, crawls up on its fingers, till it gets to where the best pulse of all is. Ah, Doctor, there is Highland blood in that heart, and it will beat warmly towards you, I know. I wonder what Peter would have said, if he had seen what I did. But then he didn’t know nothin’ about pulses.