Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/30

20 Found out some fum w'at I knowed of the accordeon. Here, I'll show ye!" And he left the table and threw open the door of the best room and the lid of the little house-organ; and bent laboriously over keyboard and pedal, he played the air of "Federal Street," if with a certain sameness in the left hand. And presently the two voices, young and old, were braided together with the droning harmony in a strain of music that could only have been pleasant in heavenly ears, however critical might have been earthly ones.

"I always knew you were full of music, Father James," said Lally, when they were finishing their supper more leisurely. "But how you contrived all this, I can't imagine. I'm just as proud as a peacock!"

"Wal, I hed a try at them books ye sent home, and I found 'twas no go. And I'd bought the organ for you to have, an' there was the old book of hymn tunes, an' 'ith the help o' that an' w'at your mother an' me learned to singin'-schule, I made out. An' sometimes 'twas like havin' courtin' days over again—warn't it, mother?"

"You're a genius! That's what you are. And mother's a master hand at biscuit. I don't know when I've tasted anything like them."

"There's a little too much shortening," said her mother.

"Your mother took fust prize to the County Fair," said her father, with an air, yet with pleasant condescension from his recent pedestal, "for her loaf -bread an' her creamer-tarter, an' her butter, an' her currant jell, an' her darnin'!"

"I think Mis' Peters hed orter hed it for the jell," said the mother, modestly. "She puts a piece o' rose-geranium leaf in hern."

"And I took on thet consarned short-horn heifer and on the colt!"

"That poor colt will never grow up. You've had the premium on him for the last five years."

"No. Lemme see. Only three. But he's a Morgan, an' there ain't any other Morgans in the county. He's a beauty—sleek as satting—an' w'at he don't know ain't wuth knowin'. There ain't any knot he can't ontie with his teeth. I ben in the habit o' takin' up Neighbor Burrage an' givin' him a lift. Burrage is ruther hefty, an' the colt don't like it for a cent. And one day I'd left him a-stan'-in' in the market, an' he see a big sailor come along that looked like Burrage, an' he walks across, wagon an' all, and opens his mouth, an' takes the sailor by the scruff of the neck an' throws 'im down. An' then he stan's an' gives a reg'lar laugh, he was so pleased 'ith himself. Oh, he's a great one! If I thought well o' racing—but then I don't," he said, ruefully. "Well, you shell hev a ride behind 'im to-morrer an' see. That is, ef we finish the hayin'—an', by glory! ef we don't!"

"Now, mother, you go and sit down," said Lally. "I'm going to clear up. And I'm going to skim the milk and scald the pans. I don't believe there's anything makes you feel so rich as skimming the cream does. You lift the thick skins and you can't bear to leave an atom. Except it is when you're hunting eggs and find two in a nest."

"No, no, now, Lally. I don't want you to. I'm useter it! 'Tain't nothin' at all. And I don't want your hands all roughed up!"

"I guess my hands can stand it if yours can."

"That's right, Lally," said her father. "Them old han's o' hern was as white as yours be once. Our han's hev growed old together, wife. With the wearin' o' years an' the wearin' o' work." And he took one of them and held it on his arm a moment, in spite of her reluctance.

It was over a house full of happy peace that the soft summer night fell. Now and then a breath from the salt marshes mixed the fresh sea-scents with the heavy richness of the lilacs, and mounted and stirred drowsily in the tops of the great elm that housed all a world of small life in the depths of its green shadow; and a golden robin waked with a gush of song; and down in the cool dew of the grass a sparrow for an instant dreamed that it was morning; and like the shield of some great spirit the moon came up, and the faint mists fled before her; and far off from farm to farm through the wide obscurity a dog bayed in the deep of the night.

"You 'sleep, mother?" said Father James in a hollow whisper.

"No. Be you?"

"I ain't closed an eye. Seems though