Christie, the Kings Servant | Page 7

watching me, and so much excited over what I
was doing, that, as time went on, I was often obliged to ask them to
move further away, so eager were they to watch every movement of my
brush.
I thoroughly enjoyed my morning's work, and went back very hungry,
and quite ready for the comfortable little dinner which Polly had
prepared for me. In the afternoon the light would be all wrong for my
picture; but I determined to sketch in the foreground, and prepare for
my next morning's work.
I was very busy upon this, when suddenly I became conscious of music,
if music it could be called. It was the most peculiar sound, and at first I
could not find out from whence it came. It was evidently not caused by
a wind instrument; I felt sure it was not a concertina or an accordion.
This sound would go on for a minute or two, and then stop suddenly,
only to begin again more loudly a few seconds later. At times I
distinguished a few bars of a tune, then only disjointed notes followed.
Could it be a child strumming idly on a harmonium? but no, it was not
at all like an instrument of that kind. It was an annoying, worrying
sound, and it went on for so long that I began to be vexed with it, and
stamped my foot impatiently when, after a short interval, I heard it
begin again. The sound seemed to come from behind the wall of the
house near which I was sitting, and it was repeated from time to time
during the whole of the afternoon.
At length, as the afternoon went on, I began to distinguish what tunes

were being attempted. I made out a bar or two of the old French
Republican air, 'The Marseillaise,' and then I was almost startled by
what came next, for it was a tune I had known well since I was a very
little child. It was 'Home, Sweet Home,' and that was my mother's
favourite tune; in fact, I never heard it without thinking of her. Many
and many a time had she sung me to sleep with that tune. I had scarlet
fever when I was five years old, and my mother had nursed me through
it, and when I was weary and fretful she would sing to me--my pretty
fair-haired mother. Even as I sat before my easel I could see her, as she
sat at the foot of my bed, with the sunshine streaming upon her through
the half-darkened window, and making her look, to my boyish
imagination, like a beautiful angel. And I could hear her voice still; and
the sweet tones in which she sang that very song to me, 'Home, sweet
home, there's no place like home.'
I remembered one night especially, in which she knelt by my bed and
prayed that she might meet her boy in the bright city, the sweet home
above the sky which was the best and brightest home of all. I wonder
what she would think of me now, I said to myself, and whether she ever
will see me there. I very much doubt it; it seems to me that I am a long
way off from Home, Sweet Home now.
My mother had died soon after that illness of mine, and I knew that she
had gone to live in that beautiful home of which she had so often
spoken to me. And I had been left behind, and my aunt, who had
brought me up, had cared for none of these things, and I had learnt to
look at the world and at life from her worldly standpoint, and had
forgotten to seek first the Kingdom of God. Oh! if my mother only
knew, my pretty, beautiful mother, I said to myself that day. And then
there came the thought, perhaps she does know, and the thought made
me very uncomfortable. I wished, more than ever, that that cracked old
instrument, whatever it was, would stop.
But, in spite of all my wishes, the strange sound went on, and again and
again I had to listen to 'Home, Sweet Home,' and each time that it came
it set my memory going, and brought back to me the words and the
looks which I thought I had forgotten. And it set something else going

too--the still, small voice within, accusing me of forgetfulness, not so
much of my mother as of my mother's God.
I began to wish most heartily that I had chosen some other spot for my
picture. But it was working out so well that I felt it would be a great
mistake to change, and I hoped that the individual, man, woman, or
child, who