"Circumstances!" repeated Summerman, incredulous.
"Yes, the difference between your affairs and those of your neighbors. You
seem to judge others by yourself?"
"My affairs! I haven't any to speak of," said the organist, with a grave
sort of wonder.
"I suppose," replied the stranger, almost angrily, "you are a human
creature; things happen to you, and they do not. If you have any feeling
at all you are affected by what happens." He ceased speaking with the
manner of a man who is annoyed that he should have been so far beguiled
into speech.
"Some things have happened to me," answered Summerman quietly, seeing
everything, pretending to see nothing. "I lived ten years among the
Gipsies. I belonged to them. That's where I had my schooling. I worked in
the tin ware; and clock mending I took up of myself. I left my people on
account of a church-organ. My father and mother were dead. I had no
brother or sister; nor any relation. But I had friends, and they would
have kept me; but I had to choose between them and the rest. I couldn't
learn the organ in the woods and meadows; I was caught by the music as
easily as a pink by a pin. But I kept to the clock mending.
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