Ralph comes downstairs, and is hailed with welcomes on all hands.  He is called upon for a song.  Yes, he can sing.  He always sang in the old days.  He must sing now.

“I’ll sing you something I heard in Lancaster,” he says.

“What about—­the Lancashire witches?”

“Who writ it—­little Monsey?”

“No, but a bigger man than Monsey,” said Ralph with a smile.

“He would be a mite if he were no bigger than the schoolmaster,” put in that lady of majestic stature, Liza Branthwaite.

Then Ralph sang in his deep baritone, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun.”

And the click of the spinning-wheels seemed to keep time to the slow measure of the fine old song.

Laddie, the collie, was there.  He lay at Ralph’s feet with a solemn face.  He was clearly thinking out the grave problems attaching to the place of dogs on this universe.

“Didn’t I hear my name awhile ago?” said a voice from behind the door.  The head of the speaker emerged presently.  It was Monsey Laman.  He had been banished with the “old folks.”

“Come your ways in, schoolmaster,” cried Robbie Anderson.  “Who says ‘yes’ to a bout of play-acting?”

As a good many said “Yes,” an armchair was forthwith placed at one corner of the kitchen with its back to the audience.  Monsey mounted it.  Robbie went out of doors, and, presently re-entering with a countenance of most woeful solemnity, approached the chair, bent on one knee, and began to speak,—­

     Oh wad I were a glove upo’ yon hand
     ’At I med kiss yon feace.

A loud burst of laughter rewarded this attempt on the life of the tragic muse.  But when the schoolmaster, perched aloft, affecting a peuking voice (a strangely unnecessary artistic effort), said,—­

“Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?” and the alleged Romeo on his knees replied, “Nowther, sweet lass, if owther thoo offend,” the laughter in the auditorium reached the point of frantic screams.  The actors, like wise artists, were obviously indifferent to any question of the kind of impression produced, and went at their task with conscientious ardor.

The little schoolmaster smiled serenely, enchantingly, bewitchingly.  Robbie panted and gasped, and sighed and moaned.

“Did you ever see a man in such a case?” said Liza, wiping away the hysterical tears of merriment that coursed down her cheeks.

“Wait a bit,” said Robbie, rather stepping out of his character.

It was a part of the “business” of this tragedy, as Robbie had seen it performed in Carlisle, that Romeo should cast a nosegay up into the balcony to Juliet.  Robbie had provided himself with the “property” in question, and, pending the moment at which it was necessary to use it, he had deposited it on the floor behind him.  But in the fervor of impersonation, he had not observed that Liza had crept up and stolen it away.