Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside, with a parting admission that it had been undoubtedly picturesque and impressive, and that it had been a valuable experience to him to see it.  At least the Irish, with all their faults, must have a poetic strain, or they would not have clung so tenaciously to those curious and ancient forms.  He recalled having heard somewhere, or read, it might be, that they were a people much given to songs and music.  And the young lady, that very handsome and friendly Miss Madden, had told him that she was a musician!  He had a new pleasure in turning this over in his mind.  Of all the closed doors which his choice of a career had left along his pathway, no other had for him such a magical fascination as that on which was graven the lute of Orpheus.  He knew not even the alphabet of music, and his conceptions of its possibilities ran but little beyond the best of the hymn-singing he had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the longing for it raised on occasion such mutiny in his soul that more than once he had specifically prayed against it as a temptation.

Dangerous though some of its tendencies might be, there was no gainsaying the fact that a love for music was in the main an uplifting influence—­an attribute of cultivation.  The world was the sweeter and more gentle for it.  And this brought him to musing upon the odd chance that the two people of Octavius who had given him the first notion of polish and intellectual culture in the town should be Irish.  The Romish priest must have been vastly surprised at his intrusion, yet had been at the greatest pains to act as if it were quite the usual thing to have Methodist ministers assist at Extreme Unction.  And the young woman—­how gracefully, with what delicacy, had she comprehended his position and robbed it of all its possible embarrassments!  It occurred to him that they must have passed, there in front of her home, the very tree from which the luckless wheelwright had fallen some hours before; and the fact that she had forborne to point it out to him took form in his mind as an added proof of her refinement of nature.

The midday dinner was a little more than ready when Theron reached home, and let himself in by the front door.  On Mondays, owing to the moisture and “clutter” of the weekly washing in the kitchen, the table was laid in the sitting-room, and as he entered from the hall the partner of his joys bustled in by the other door, bearing the steaming platter of corned beef, dumplings, cabbages, and carrots, with arms bared to the elbows, and a red face.  It gave him great comfort, however, to note that there were no signs of the morning’s displeasure remaining on this face; and he immediately remembered again those interrupted projects of his about the piano and the hired girl.

“Well!  I’d just about begun to reckon that I was a widow,” said Alice, putting down her fragrant burden.  There was such an obvious suggestion of propitiation in her tone that Theron went around and kissed her.  He thought of saying something about keeping out of the way because it was “Blue Monday,” but held it back lest it should sound like a reproach.