I have never heard Home, Sweet Home
sung as touchingly and seriously as he sang it; he seemed to
make it quite new; and when he paused for a moment at the end of
the first line and began the next, the old mother joined him and
they sang together, she missing only the higher notes, where he
seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment and carry on her
very note and air. It was the silent man's real and only means of
expression, and one could have listened forever, and have asked for
more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and the
best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd
kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I
saw the tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the
tears in mine. But at last the songs ended and the time came to
say good-by; it was the end of a great pleasure.
Mrs. Blackett, the dear old lady, opened the door of her
bedroom while Mrs. Todd was tying up the herb bag, and William had
gone down to get the boat ready and to blow the horn for Johnny
Bowden, who had joined a roving boat party who were off the shore
lobstering.
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