Sandra Belloni | Page 6

in a tone of
vexed apology for strange ignorance: "But I know not it? It is
Italian--yes, I swear it is Italian! But--who then? It is superbe! But I
know not it!"
"It is mine," said the young person.
"Your music, miss?"
"I mean, I composed it."

"Permit me to say, Brava!"
The ladies instantly petitioned to have it sung to them again; and
whether or not they thought more of it, or less, now that the authorship
was known to them, they were louder in their applause, which seemed
to make the little person very happy.
"You are sure it pleases you?" she exclaimed.
They were very sure it pleased them. Somehow the ladies were
growing gracious toward her, from having previously felt too humble,
it may be. She was girlish in her manner, and not imposing in her figure.
She would be a sweet mystery to talk about, they thought: but she had
ceased to be quite the same mystery to them.
"I would go on singing to you," she said; "I could sing all night long:
but my people at the farm will not keep supper for me, when it's late,
and I shall have to go hungry to bed, if I wait."
"Have you far to go?" ventured Adela.
"Only to Wilson's farm; about ten minutes' walk through the wood,"
she answered unhesitatingly.
Arabella wished to know whether she came frequently to this lovely
spot.
"When it does not rain, every evening," was the reply.
"You feel that the place inspires you?" said Cornelia.
"I am obliged to come," she explained. "The good old dame at the farm
is ill, and she says that music all day is enough for her, and I must come
here, or I should get no chance of playing at all at night."
"But surely you feel an inspiration in the place, do you not?" Cornelia
persisted.
She looked at this lady as if she had got a hard word given her to crack,

and muttered: "I feel it quite warm here. And I do begin to love the
place."
The stately Cornelia fell back a step.
The moon was now a silver ball on the edge of the circle of grey blue
above the ring of firs, and by the light falling on the strange little
person, as she stood out of the shadow to muffle up her harp, it could
be seen that she was simply clad, and that her bonnet was not of the
newest fashion. The sisters remarked a boot-lace hanging loose. The
peculiar black lustre of her hair, and thickness of her long black
eyebrows, struck them likewise. Her harp being now comfortably
mantled, Cornet Wilfrid Pole, who had been watching her and
balancing repeatedly on his forward foot, made a stride, and "really
could not allow her to carry it herself," and begged her permission that
he might assist her. "It's very heavy, you know," he added.
"Too heavy for me," she said, favouring him with a thankful smile. "I
have some one who does that. Where is Jim?"
She called for Jim, and from the back of the sandy hillock, where he
had been reclining, a broad-shouldered rustic came lurching round to
them.
"Now, take my harp, if you please, and be as careful as possible of
branches, and don't stumble." She uttered this as if she were giving Jim
his evening lesson: and then with a sudden cry she laughed out: "Oh!
but I haven't played you your tune, and you must have your tune!"
Forthwith she stript the harp half bare, and throwing a propitiatory
bright glance at her audience on the other side of her, she commenced
thrumming a kind of Giles Scroggins, native British, beer-begotten air,
while Jim smeared his mouth and grinned, as one who sees his love
dragged into public view, and is not the man to be ashamed of her,
though he hopes you will hardly put him to the trial.
"This is his favourite tune, that he taught me," she emphasized to the
company. "I play to him every night, for a finish; and then he takes care

not to knock my poor harp to pieces and tumble about."
The gentlemen were amused by the Giles Scroggins air, which she had
delivered with a sufficient sense of its lumping fun and leg-for-leg
jollity, and they laughed and applauded; but the ladies were silent after
the performance, until the moment came to thank her for the
entertainment she had afforded them: and then they broke into gentle
smiles, and trusted they might have the pleasure of hearing her another
night.
"Oh! just as often and as much as you like," she said, and first held her
hand to Arabella, next to Cornelia, and then to Adela. She seemed to be