"
"Not civil to her? If I were present, and heard that woman breathe
the slight eat incivility, I'd--"
He broke off in the midst of his vehemence with a startled look
towards the door.
"Mr. Egger," he exclaimed, "a song; I beg, a song. Come, I'll lead
off.
'Miss Enderby hath a beaming eye'--
Bah! I'm not in voice to-night."
Egger was persuaded to sit down to the piano. It was a mournful
instrument, reduced to discordant wheeziness by five-finger
exercises, but the touch of the Swiss could still evoke from it some
kind of harmony. He sang a Volkslied, and in a way which showed that
there was poetry in the man's nature, though his outward appearance
gave so little promise of it. His voice was very fair, and well
suited to express the tender pathos of these inimitable melodies.
Waymark always enjoyed this singing; his eyes brightened, and a fine
emotion played about his lips. And as he walked along the dark ways
to his lodgings, Egger's voice was still in his ears--
"_Der Mensch wenn er fortgeht, der kommt nimmermefr_."
"Heaven be thanked, no!" the young man said to himself.
Poverty was his familiar companion, and had been so for years. His
rent paid each week, there often remained a sum quite insufficient
for the absolute necessities of existence; for anything more, he had
to look to chance pupils in the evenings, and what little he could
earn with his pen.
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