Then the two serving-women got up and helped her, or carried her, out of the room to her bedroom behind. And the old man arose, and without so much as a good-night hobbled away to his own cottage.
'She will go to bed now,' said Armorel. 'Chessun will take in her broth and her wine, and she will sleep all night.'
'Do you have this performance every night?'
'Yes; the playing seems to put life and heart into her. All the morning she dozes, or if she wakes she is not often able to talk; but in the evening, when we sit around the fire just as they used to sit in the old days, without candles—because my people were poor and candles were dear—and when Chessun spins and I play—she revives and sits up and talks, as you have seen her.'
'Yes. It is rather ghostly.'
'Justinian used to play—oh! he could play very well indeed.'
'Not so well as you.'
'Yes—much better—and he knows hundreds of tunes. But his fingers became stiff with rheumatism, and, as he had put off teaching Peter until it was too late, he taught me. That is all.'
'I think you play wonderfully well. Do you play nothing but old tunes?'
'I only know what I have learned. There is that song which I heard the lady sing last year—I don't know what it is called. Tell me if you like it.'