Perhaps she wondered that the boy who would deceive his grandmother
about a violin should be so immovable in regarding her pleasure in
the matter of a needful medicine. But in this fact I begin to see
the very Falconer of my manhood's worship.
'Eh, mem! gin ye wad play something upo' her,' he resumed, pointing
to the piano, which, although he had never seen one before, he at
once recognized, by some hidden mental operation, as the source of
the sweet sounds heard at the window, 'it wad du me mair guid than a
haill bottle o' brandy, or whusky either.'
'How do you know that?' asked Miss St. John, proceeding to sponge
the wound.
''Cause mony's the time I hae stud oot there i' the street,
hearkenin'. Dooble Sanny says 'at ye play jist as gin ye war my
gran'father's fiddle hersel', turned into the bonniest cratur ever
God made.'
'How did you get such a terrible cut?'
She had removed the hair, and found that the injury was severe.
The boy was silent. She glanced round in his face. He was staring
as if he saw nothing, heard nothing. She would try again.
'Did you fall? Or how did you cut your head?'
'Yes, yes, mem, I fell,' he answered, hastily, with an air of
relief, and possibly with some tone of gratitude for the suggestion
of a true answer.
'What made you fall?'
Utter silence again. She felt a kind of turn--I do not know another
word to express what I mean: the boy must have fits, and either
could not tell, or was ashamed to tell, what had befallen him.
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