"Oh, but that's because they don't understand," soothed the man. "Now, tell me--you must have practiced a lot to play like that."

"I did--but I liked it."

"And what else did you do? and how did you happen to come--down here?"

Once again David told his story, more fully, perhaps, this time than ever before, because of the sympathetic ears that were listening.

"But now" he finished wistfully, "it's all, so different, and I'm down here alone. Daddy went, you know, to the far country; and he can't come back from there."

"Who told you--that?"

"Daddy himself. He wrote it to me."

"Wrote it to you!" cried the man, sitting suddenly erect.

"Yes. It was in his pocket, you see. They--found it." David's voice was very low, and not quite steady.

"David, may I see--that letter?"

The boy hesitated; then slowly he drew it from his pocket.

"Yes, Mr. Jack. I'll let YOU see it."

Reverently, tenderly, but very eagerly the man took the note and read it through, hoping somewhere to find a name that would help solve the mystery. With a sigh he handed it back. His eyes were wet.

"Thank you, David. That is a beautiful letter," he said softly. "And I believe you'll do it some day, too. You'll go to him with your violin at your chin and the bow drawn across the strings to tell him of the beautiful world you have found."

"Yes, sir," said David simply. Then, with a suddenly radiant smile: "And NOW I can't help finding it a beautiful world, you know, 'cause I don't count the hours I don't like."

"You don't what?--oh, I remember," returned Mr. Jack, a quick change coming to his face.

"Yes, the sundial, you know, where my Lady of the Roses lives."

"Jack, what is a sundial?" broke in Jill eagerly.

Jack turned, as if in relief.

"Hullo, girlie, you there?--and so still all this time? Ask David.

He'll tell you what a sundial is. Suppose, anyhow, that you two go out on the piazza now. I've got--er-some work to do. And the sun itself is out; see?--through the trees there. It came out just to say 'good-night,' I'm sure. Run along, quick!" And he playfully drove them from the room.

Alone, he turned and sat down at his desk. His work was before him, but he did not do it. His eyes were out of the window on the golden tops of the towers of Sunnycrest. Motionless, he watched them until they turned gray-white in the twilight. Then he picked up his pencil and began to write feverishly. He went to the window, however, as David stepped off the veranda, and called merrily:--

"Remember, boy, that when there's another note that baffles me, I'm going to send for you."

"He's coming anyhow. I asked him," announced Jill.

And David laughed back a happy "Of course I am!"

CHAPTER XIV

THE TOWER WINDOW

It is not to be expected that when one's thoughts lead so persistently to a certain place, one's feet will not follow, if they can; and David's could--so he went to seek his Lady of the Roses.

At four o'clock one afternoon, with his violin under his arm, he traveled the firm white road until he came to the shadowed path that led to the garden. He had decided that he would go exactly as he went before. He expected, in consequence, to find his Lady exactly as he had found her before, sitting reading under the roses. Great was his surprise and disappointment, therefore, to find the garden with no one in it.

He had told himself that it was the sundial, the roses, the shimmering pool, the garden itself that he wanted to see; but he knew now that it was the lady--his Lady of the Roses. He did not even care to play, though all around him was the beauty that had at first so charmed his eye. Very slowly he walked across the sunlit, empty s.p.a.ce, and entered the path that led to the house. In his mind was no definite plan; yet he walked on and on, until he came to the wide lawns surrounding the house itself. He stopped then, entranced.

Stone upon stone the majestic pile raised itself until it was etched, clean-cut, against the deep blue of the sky. The towers--his towers--brought to David's lips a cry of delight. They were even more enchanting here than when seen from afar over the tree-tops, and David gazed up at them in awed wonder. From somewhere came the sound of music--a curious sort of music that David had never heard before. He listened intently, trying to place it; then slowly he crossed the lawn, ascended the imposing stone steps, and softly opened one of the narrow screen doors before the wide-open French window.

Once within the room David drew a long breath of ecstasy. Beneath his feet he felt the velvet softness of the green moss of the woods. Above his head he saw a sky-like canopy of blue carrying fleecy clouds on which floated little pink-and-white children with wings, just as David himself had so often wished that he could float. On all sides silken hangings, like the green of swaying vines, half-hid other hangings of feathery, snowflake lace. Everywhere mirrored walls caught the light and reflected the potted ferns and palms so that David looked down endless vistas of loveliness that seemed for all the world like the long sunflecked aisles beneath the tall pines of his mountain home.

The music that David had heard at first had long since stopped; but David had not noticed that. He stood now in the center of the room, awed, and trembling, but enraptured. Then from somewhere came a voice--a voice so cold that it sounded as if it had swept across a field of ice.

"Well, boy, when you have quite finished your inspection, perhaps you will tell me to what I am indebted for THIS visit," it said.

David turned abruptly.

"O Lady of the Roses, why didn't you tell me it was like this--in here?" he breathed.

"Well, really," murmured the lady in the doorway, stiffly, "it had not occurred to me that that was hardly--necessary."

"But it was!--don't you see? This is new, all new. I never saw anything like it before; and I do so love new things. It gives me something new to play; don't you understand?"

"New--to play?"

"Yes--on my violin," explained David, a little breathlessly, softly testing his violin. "There's always something new in this, you know,"

he hurried on, as he tightened one of the strings, "when there's anything new outside. Now, listen! You see I don't know myself just how it's going to sound, and I'm always so anxious to find out." And with a joyously rapt face he began to play.

"But, see here, boy,--you mustn't! You--" The words died on her lips; and, to her unbounded amazement, Miss Barbara Holbrook, who had intended peremptorily to send this persistent little tramp boy about his business, found herself listening to a melody so compelling in its sonorous beauty that she was left almost speechless at its close. It was the boy who spoke.

"There, I told you my violin would know what to say!"

"'What to say'!--well, that's more than I do" laughed Miss Holbrook, a little hysterically. "Boy, come here and tell me who you are." And she led the way to a low divan that stood near a harp at the far end of the room.

It was the same story, told as David had told it to Jack and Jill a few days before, only this time David's eyes were roving admiringly all about the room, resting oftenest on the harp so near him.

"Did that make the music that I heard?" he asked eagerly, as soon as Miss Holbrook's questions gave him opportunity. "It's got strings."

"Yes. I was playing when you came in. I saw you enter the window.

Really, David, are you in the habit of walking into people's houses like this? It is most disconcerting--to their owners."

"Yes--no--well, sometimes." David's eyes were still on the harp. "Lady of the Roses, won't you please play again--on that?"

"David, you are incorrigible! Why did you come into my house like this?"