Mrs. Jazeph looked at him earnestly while he was addressing her, and advanced a step or two before she said any thing. "Am I so changed?" she asked softly. "So sadly, sadly changed, Uncle Joseph?"
"Gott im Himmel! it's her voice—it's Sarah Leeson!" cried the old man, running up to his visitor as nimbly as if he was a boy again, taking both her hands, and kissing her with an odd, brisk tenderness on the cheek. Although his niece was not at all above the average height of women, Uncle Joseph was so short that he had to raise himself on tiptoe to perform the ceremony of embracing her.
"To think of Sarah coming at last!" he said, pressing her into a chair. "After all these years and years, to think of Sarah Leeson coming to see Uncle Joseph again!"
"Sarah still, but not Sarah Leeson," said Mrs. Jazeph, pressing her thin, trembling hands firmly together, and looking down on the floor while she spoke.
"Ah! married?" said Mr. Buschmann, gayly. "Married, of course. Tell me all about your husband, Sarah."
"He is dead. Dead and forgiven." She murmured the last three words in a whisper to herself.
"Ah! I am so sorry for you! I spoke too suddenly, did I not, my child?" said the old man. "Never mind! No, no; I don't mean that—I mean let us talk of something else. You will have a bit of bread and jam, won't you, Sarah?—ravishing raspberry jam that melts in your mouth. Some tea, then? So, so, she will have some tea, to be sure. And we won't talk of our troubles—at least, not just yet. You look very pale, Sarah—very much older than you ought to look—no, I don't mean that either; I don't mean to be rude. It was your voice I knew you by, my child—your voice that your poor Uncle Max always said would have made your fortune if you would only have learned to sing. Here's his pretty music box going still. Don't look so downhearted—don't, pray. Do listen a little to the music: you remember the box?—my brother Max's box? Why, how you look! Have you forgotten the box that the divine Mozart gave to my brother with his own hand, when Max was a boy in the music school at Vienna? Listen! I have set it going again. It's a song they call 'Batti, Batti;' it's a song in an opera of Mozart's. Ah! beautiful! beautiful! Your Uncle Max said that all music was comprehended in that one song. I know nothing about music, but I have my heart and my ears, and they tell me that Max was right."
Speaking these words with abundant gesticulation and amazing volubility, Mr. Buschmann poured out a cup of tea for his niece, stirred it carefully, and, patting her on the shoulder, begged that she would make him happy by drinking it all up directly. As he came close to her to press this request, he discovered that the tears were in her eyes, and that she was trying to take her handkerchief from her pocket without being observed.
"Don't mind me," she said, seeing the old man's face sadden as he looked at her; "and don't think me forgetful or ungrateful, Uncle Joseph. I remember the box—I remember every thing that you used to take an interest in, when I was younger and happier than I am now. When I last saw you, I came to you in trouble; and I come to you in trouble once more. It seems neglectful in me never to have written to you for so many years past; but my life has been a very sad one, and I thought I had no right to lay the burden of my sorrow on other shoulders than my own."
Uncle Joseph shook his head at these last words, and touched the stop of the musical box. "Mozart shall wait a little," he said, gravely, "till I have told you something. Sarah, hear what I say, and drink your tea, and own to me whether I speak the truth or not. What did I, Joseph Buschmann, tell you, when you first came to me in trouble, fourteen, fifteen, ah more! sixteen years ago, in this town, and in this same house? I said then, what I say again now: 'Sarah's sorrow is my sorrow, and Sarah's joy is my joy;' and if any man asks me reasons for that, I have three to give him."