“A living death, this!” grumbled Pine.
“We must make the best of it,” replied Maple.
One evening a stranger came into the store and asked, “Have you a first-class violin in stock?”
“Yes, just one. I got it several months ago by the merest chance. We don’t keep such instruments usually,” said the dealer, taking out the violin. “It is wonderful for an instrument not ten years old.”
“I want one for the evening, only,” said the stranger. “Madame Camilla is here in the city, and to-night plays for the Orphans’ Home. One of her violins is under treatment, and her Cremona has been broken.”
“Madame Camilla!” exclaimed Pine, with a quiver of delight.
“Can it be our little Camilla?” asked Maple in a trembling voice.
In a few minutes the violin was taken from its case by Camilla’s own hand. She ran her fingers gently over the strings, looked at the varnish, tightened the bow and rosined it carefully and finally placed the violin against her shoulder, and drew the bow smoothly across the strings.
She played an air in which the coming of a storm was represented, and Pine and Maple heard once more the sighing of the wind as it once had swept through their branches.
“That’s the sound of the wind in the pine and maple that stood near my log cabin home when I was a little girl,” said the musician to the people standing near.