The boys were still examining the violin when they were arrested by a little broken wail. They turned to see their mother crying over an open letter.

With a bound Blue was at her side. “What is it? What is the matter?” he demanded.

“He was—your Uncle Jim!” She put her handkerchief to her eyes, and began to sob.

“Uncle Jim?—her husband?” Blue’s astonished voice sounded strangely unnatural.

The mother assented. “I knew his handwriting—the minute I saw the envelope. I was afraid of it when Mr. Gaylord told me the name—oh, if I’d only known! Now it’s too late!” She dropped her head to the cruel edge of the trunk, and wept aloud. “It serves me right! I held myself above her—just because she danced in a theater! O God, forgive me! I’ve got my pay for being so high and mighty! There I could have found out all about my dear brother if I’d treated her like a Christian! And I left her to die alone—my own sister-in-law!”

Mrs. Stickney’s remorse was pitiful to see. Blue did not know what to say, but stood there, silent and uneasy.

“Don’t cry, mother dear!” pleaded Doodles. “You didn’t know, and I guess I comforted her—so that’s just the same.”

“No, no, it isn’t, you blessed child! I’m a wicked woman; but I’m glad as can be that you went to see her, and sung to her. That’s my only consolation. And I shouldn’t have let you go if I’d had my way! Oh, what did make me so heathenish!”

Later, when the violence of her grief had subsided, she read to the boys what was doubtless their uncle’s last letter to his wife.

Kitty dearest,—

Throw up your hat, and give three cheers for Teuffel! Then think of me—first violin in the orchestra! Teuffel has at last waked up to the merits of the humble. I won’t tell you what he is going to pay me—good news has been known to work havoc, and I must dole it out to you in small spoonfuls, for fear—! But there’s the cutest little cottage waiting for my word—waiting for us—right on Prescott Street, too! What do you think of that? Yes, I can afford it! You needn’t worry! Don’t stop to finish up your engagement! They’ll let you off—they’ve got to! It seems as if I couldn’t wait to have you in my arms again! I know you will want to work till you have enough for the baby’s stone; but just let me attend to that! I’ll save every spare cent till we have it. At last I’ve come to the place where you can stop work and rely on me. Only Heaven and I know how I have looked forward to this day—it has been long in coming! But I won’t think about the past. Now you can rest! How I have rebelled at being obliged to let you go on the stage again! We’ll hope that is all over. Don’t wait for anything, but take the first train west!

I met Nora and Louis this morning. They had heard of my good luck, and were full of congratulations, and, of course, wild to see you. It is almost time for rehearsal, and I must say good-bye. Come just as soon as you can pack up, Kitty darling! Send a card ahead if there’s time—anyway I’ll meet the next train.

Good-bye—wish you were right here where I shouldn’t have to say it! How could I ever have let you go! Your own

Mrs. Stickney sighed as she folded the sheet. “It sounds just like Jim,” she declared. “He hadn’t changed a mite. If I could only have seen him once more—or even heard about him! I shall never get over it!”

Later, after a little talk, it was decided to say nothing concerning the trunk or its contents. The family shrank from the wonderment of their neighbors and the inevitable questions that would follow the disclosure. So The Flatiron never knew what a tidbit of gossip had been missed.

For a while Doodles could not be coaxed to try his precious fiddle. He felt that the man with the ferret eyes had ears to match, and who knew how near he might be lurking? But as the days passed, and he was seen no more, the small boy gained courage, until finally his desire conquered his fear, and, one stormy evening, he began to play.

Mrs. Stickney, not having heard the assurance of the giver, and her opinion being unconsciously colored by Mr. Somerby’s comments, was not prepared for the exceeding richness of the tones that Doodles brought from the instrument.

Blue at once voiced his thought. “That man was a big liar!”

“Look out!” reproved his mother.

“You know he was!” he insisted. “He wanted to get hold of that fiddle, so’s to sell it—I bet he did!”

Doodles paid no attention to the talk. He was in another world—the world of music and rapture.

“He ought to take lessons,” Blue told himself over and over, and even tried to save up his spare nickels for a possible teacher. Once he appealed to his mother, but she shook her head with such sad finality that he ventured no more.

If Doodles ever longed for knowledge beyond his own rare gifts and the little that Christarchus had taught him, the wish never left his heart; and Blue declared that he played “better and better every day.”

The Flatiron took the violin as thoughtlessly as it took many other things, and few comments were made concerning the acquisition of the instrument. That the playing was enjoyed by all within hearing was manifest by open doors up and down the corridors, as well as from the homely bits of approval that came by diverse ways to the Stickney kitchen. These short, dark days were Caruso’s silent season. Thus the violin became Doodles’s work, play, comrade, and comforter, during the long hours while his mother and Blue were away.