David had pa.s.sed the tumble-down shanty, and was hesitating where two streets crossed, when he felt a light touch on his arm. He turned to confront a small girl in a patched and faded calico dress, obviously outgrown. Her eyes were wide and frightened. In the middle of her outstretched dirty little palm was a copper cent.

"If you please, Joe sent this--to you," she faltered.

"To me? What for?" David stopped playing and lowered his violin.

The little girl backed away perceptibly, though she still held out the coin.

"He wanted you to stay and play some more. He said to tell you he'd 'a'

sent more money if he could. But he didn't have it. He just had this cent."

David's eyes flew wide open.

"You mean he WANTS me to play? He likes it?" he asked joyfully.

"Yes. He said he knew 't wa'n't much--the cent. But he thought maybe you'd play a LITTLE for it."

"Play? Of course I'll play" cried David. "Oh, no, I don't want the money," he added, waving the again-proffered coin aside. "I don't need money where I'm living now. Where is he--the one that wanted me to play?" he finished eagerly.

"In there by the window. It's Joe. He's my brother." The little girl, in spite of her evident satisfaction at the accomplishment of her purpose, yet kept quite aloof from the boy. Nor did the fact that he refused the money appear to bring her anything but uneasy surprise.

In the window David saw a boy apparently about his own age, a boy with sandy hair, pale cheeks, and wide-open, curiously intent blue eyes.

"Is he coming? Did you get him? Will he play?" called the boy at the window eagerly.

"Yes, I'm right here. I'm the one. Can't you see the violin? Shall I play here or come in?" answered David, not one whit less eagerly.

The small girl opened her lips as if to explain something; but the boy in the window did not wait.

"Oh, come in. WILL you come in?" he cried unbelievingly. "And will you just let me touch it--the fiddle? Come! You WILL come? See, there isn't anybody home, only just Betty and me."

"Of course I will!" David fairly stumbled up the broken steps in his impatience to reach the wide-open door. "Did you like it--what I played? And did you know what I was playing? Did you understand? Could you see the cloud-boats up in the sky, and my Silver Lake down in the valley? And could you hear the birds, and the winds in the trees, and the little brooks? Could you? Oh, did you understand? I've so wanted to find some one that could! But I wouldn't think that YOU--HERE--" With a gesture, and an expression on his face that were unmistakable, David came to a helpless pause.

"There, Joe, what'd I tell you," cried the little girl, in a husky whisper, darting to her brother's side. "Oh, why did you make me get him here? Everybody says he's crazy as a loon, and--"

But the boy reached out a quickly silencing hand. His face was curiously alight, as if from an inward glow. His eyes, still widely intent, were staring straight ahead.

"Stop, Betty, wait," he hushed her. "Maybe--I think I DO understand.

Boy, you mean--INSIDE of you, you see those things, and then you try to make your fiddle tell what you are seeing. Is that it?"

"Yes, yes," cried David. "Oh, you DO understand. And I never thought you could. I never thought that anybody could that did n't have anything to look at but him--but these things."

"'Anything but these to look at'!" echoed the boy, with a sudden anguish in his voice. "Anything but these! I guess if I could see ANYTHING, I wouldn't mind WHAT I see! An' you wouldn't, neither, if you was--blind, like me."

"Blind!" David fell back. Face and voice were full of horror. "You mean you can't see--anything, with your eyes?"

"Nothin'."

"Oh! I never saw any one blind before. There was one in a book--but father took it away. Since then, in books down here, I've found others--but--"

"Yes, yes. Well, never mind that," cut in the blind boy, growing restive under the pity in the other's voice. "Play. Won't you?"

"But how are you EVER going to know what a beautiful world it is?"

shuddered David. "How can you know? And how can you ever play in tune?

You're one of the instruments. Father said everybody was. And he said everybody was playing SOMETHING all the time; and if you didn't play in tune--"

"Joe, Joe, please," begged the little girl "Won't you let him go? I'm afraid. I told you--"

"Shucks, Betty! He won't hurt ye," laughed Joe, a little irritably.

Then to David he turned again with some sharpness.

"Play, won't ye? You SAID you'd play!"

"Yes, oh, yes, I'll play," faltered David, bringing his violin hastily to position, and testing the strings with fingers that shook a little.

"There!" breathed Joe, settling back in his chair with a contented sigh. "Now, play it again--what you did before."

But David did not play what he did before--at first. There were no airy cloud-boats, no far-reaching sky, no birds, or murmuring forest brooks in his music this time. There were only the poverty-stricken room, the dirty street, the boy alone at the window, with his sightless eyes--the boy who never, never would know what a beautiful world he lived in.

Then suddenly to David came a new thought. This boy, Joe, had said before that he understood. He had seemed to know that he was being told of the sunny skies and the forest winds, the singing birds and the babbling brooks. Perhaps again now he would understand.

What if, for those sightless eyes, one could create a world?

Possibly never before had David played as he played then. It was as if upon those four quivering strings, he was laying the purple and gold of a thousand sunsets, the rose and amber of a thousand sunrises, the green of a boundless earth, the blue of a sky that reached to heaven itself--to make Joe understand.

"Gee!" breathed Joe, when the music came to an end with a crashing chord. "Say, wa'n't that just great? Won't you let me, please, just touch that fiddle?" And David, looking into the blind boy's exalted face, knew that Joe had indeed--understood.

CHAPTER X

THE LADY OF THE ROSES

It was a new world, indeed, that David created for Joe after that--a world that had to do with entrancing music where once was silence; delightful companionship where once was loneliness; and toothsome cookies and doughnuts where once was hunger.

The Widow Glaspell, Joe's mother, worked out by the day, scrubbing and washing; and Joe, perforce, was left to the somewhat erratic and decidedly unskillful ministrations of Betty. Betty was no worse, and no better, than any other untaught, irresponsible twelve-year-old girl, and it was not to be expected, perhaps, that she would care to spend all the bright sunny hours shut up with her sorely afflicted and somewhat fretful brother. True, at noon she never failed to appear and prepare something that pa.s.sed for a dinner for herself and Joe. But the Glaspell larder was frequently almost as empty as were the hungry stomachs that looked to it for refreshment; and it would have taken a far more skillful cook than was the fly-away Betty to evolve anything from it that was either palatable or satisfying.

With the coming of David into Joe's life all this was changed. First, there were the music and the companionship. Joe's father had "played in the band" in his youth, and (according to the Widow Glaspell) had been a "powerful hand for music." It was from him, presumably, that Joe had inherited his pa.s.sion for melody and harmony; and it was no wonder that David recognized so soon in the blind boy the spirit that made them kin. At the first stroke of David's bow, indeed, the dingy walls about them would crumble into nothingness, and together the two boys were off in a fairy world of loveliness and joy.

Nor was listening always Joe's part. From "just touching" the violin--his first longing plea--he came to drawing a timid bow across the strings. In an incredibly short time, then, he was picking out bits of melody; and by the end of a fortnight David had brought his father's violin for Joe to practice on.

"I can't GIVE it to you--not for keeps," David had explained, a bit tremulously, "because it was daddy's, you know; and when I see it, it seems almost as if I was seeing him. But you may take it. Then you can have it here to play on whenever you like."

After that, in Joe's own hands lay the power to transport himself into another world, for with the violin for company he knew no loneliness.

Nor was the violin all that David brought to the house. There were the doughnuts and the cookies. Very early in his visits David had discovered, much to his surprise, that Joe and Betty were often hungry.

"But why don't you go down to the store and buy something?" he had queried at once.

Upon being told that there was no money to buy with, David's first impulse had been to bring several of the gold-pieces the next time he came; but upon second thoughts David decided that he did not dare. He was not wishing to be called a thief a second time. It would be better, he concluded, to bring some food from the house instead.