Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/132

108 after. 'Do you mean how much money?' I says. 'Yes,' he says; 'how much money?' 'I'll give you five bob,' I says. 'Five bob!—for my fiddle!' He gives a kind of laugh, though it wasn't the sort of laugh what did you good to hear, not by no manner of means. 'I'll take it,' he says. So, after all, she hadn't given so much more for the thing than she had sold it for. "I was took back. Course I see it was worth more than five bob. But it wasn't my business to tell him so—'ardly! I hands him the pieces. 'Let me play a last tune upon my fiddle,' he says. He picks it up, and he plays that same tune which you've just now whistled. He could play, he could! Then he kisses the fiddle and he goes away."

The lady paused; we stood silent. "I puts the fiddle on that shelf just where you're standing. That night I woke up sudden. I couldn't make out what it was had woke me. Then I heard a noise. First I thought it was cats. But it wasn't no cats; it was someone fiddling, right in the shop! 'Well,' I says, 'blame their impudence, if someone ain't busted in.' So I comes downstairs without my shoes and stockings on, and I stands outside the door what leads into the shop, and I listens. If it wasn't the same tune the little chap had played! 'If this ain't good,' I says to myself. 'Blow me if he ain't come back after his fiddle! I'll fiddle him!' I has the lamp in my hand, and I opens the door sudden, and I goes in."

The lady paused.

"You may believe me or you mayn't, but there wasn't no one there—ne'er a one. I couldn't make it out, I tell you that. As I was going forward I all