“But the music, Aunt Phœbe?” persisted Alice, repressing a smile.
“De music!” ejaculated Phœbe; “de music! Didn’t you hear it through de window? You didn’t?” And she clasped her hands, shut her eyes, and began rocking to and fro, her head nodding all the while with certain peculiar little jerks, “Umgh-umgh!—umgh-umgh!—umgh-umgh!” This inexplicable dumb-show she kept up some time. “Don’t talk, chillun; don’t talk—umgh-umgh!—don’t talk,—I axed Dick dis mornin’, says I, Dick, says I, huckum, you reckon, nobody never told ole marster as how Mr. Smith drawed sich a bow, says I?”
“Mr. Smith!” exclaimed Alice, looking at the two girls with amazement in her wide eyes.
The two girls nodded.
“Yes, Mr. Smith was de very one. Phœbe never did hear de like, never in her born days. Sich a scrapin’ and a scratchin’, and sich a runnin’ up and down a fiddle, Phœbe never did see, though she thought she had seen fiddlers in her time.”
And she went on and gave such an account of the performance as you would not find in any musical journal. What did she know, poor soul, about technique, for example,—or breadth of phrasing, for the matter of that?
“Mr. Smith!” reiterated Alice, with stark incredulity.
“Dat was de very one!”
Alice looked from one to another of the girls.
“Did you ever!” looked they in turn.