"
"What do you want to be?"
"A great violinist," answered the child, his ivory-hued
face suddenly warming into living rose. "I want to play
to thousands--and see their eyes look as yours do when I play.
Sometimes your eyes frighten me, but oh, it's a splendid fright!
If I had father's violin I could do better. I remember
that he once said it had a soul that was doing purgatory
for its sins when it had lived on earth. I don't know what
he meant, but it did seem to me that HIS violin was alive.
He taught me to play on it as soon as I was big enough to hold it."
"Did you love your father?" asked old Abel, with a keen look.
Again Felix crimsoned; but he looked straightly and steadily
into his old friend's face.
"No," he said, "I didn't; but," he added, gravely and deliberately,
"I don't think you should have asked me such a question."
It was old Abel's turn to blush. Carmody people would not have
believed he could blush; and perhaps no living being could
have called that deepening hue into his weather-beaten cheek
save only this gray-eyed child of the rebuking face.
"No, I guess I shouldn't," he said. "But I'm always making mistakes.
I've never made anything else. That's why I'm nothing more than
'Old Abel' to the Carmody people.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100