“The wind’s too rough; I’ve had enough of it.”
“Then let me stay on the doorstep alone. You stop in the shelter with Linnet.”
“No, Silas, we’ll all three stop in here together. I’ll sing to you a bit, shall I?” Morgan observed her firmness with a surprised admiration.
She got her zither from the cupboard where she kept it, laid it on the table, and tried the chords with a little tortoiseshell clip that she slipped over her thumb. The thin notes quivered through the bluster of the wind and the harshness of Silas’s voice. She bent intently over her tuning, trying the notes with her voice, adjusting the wires with the key she held between her fingers.
“Now!” she said, looking up and smiling.
She sang her little sentimental songs, “Annie Laurie,” and “My boy Jo,” her voice as clear and natural as the accompaniment was painstaking. She struck the wires bravely with her tortoiseshell clip. Morgan applauded.
“It’s grand, Mrs. Dene.”
“Why do you choose to-day for your zither?” Silas asked in his most rasping tone.
“It’s Sunday, Silas,—a home day.”
“But you’re not home; you’re in my cottage; your home is with Gregory, next door. You’re here with me and Linnet.”