at down at the
instrument, I withdrew into a corner, where Miss Martha followed me as
if to talk. But when he began, I think every one was silent.

"The song he sang is an old one now, Ida, but it was comparatively new
then, and it so happened that very few of us had heard it before. It
was 'Home, Sweet Home.' He had a charming voice, with a sweet pathetic
ring about it, and his singing would have redeemed a song of far
smaller merit, and of sentiment less common to all his hearers. As it
was, our sympathies were taken by storm. The rector's wife sobbed
audibly, but, I believe, happily, with an oblique reference to the ten
children she had left at home; and poor Miss Martha, behind me,
touched away tear after tear with her thin finger-tips, and finally
took to her pocket-handkerchief, and thoughts of the dear dead
brother, and the little house and garden, and I know not what earlier
home still. As for me, I thought of Reka Dom.

"We had had many homes, but that was _the_ home _par excellence_--the
beloved of my father, the beloved of us all. And as the clear voice
sang the refrain, which sounded in some of our ears like a tender cry
of recall to past happiness,

'Home--Home--sweet, sweet Home!'

I stroked Miss Martha's knee in silent sympathy, and saw Reka Dom
before my eyes. The river seemed to flow with the melody. I swung to
the tune between the elm-trees, with Walton and Cotton on my lap. What
would Piscator have thought of it, had the milkmaid sung him this
song? I roamed through the three lawns that were better to me than
pleasures and palaces, and stood among the box-edged gardens. Then the
refrain called me back again--

'Home--Home--sweet, sweet Home!'

I was almost glad that it ended before I, too, quite broke down.

"Everybody crowded round the singer with admiration of the song, and
inquiries about it.

"'I heard it at a concert in town the other day,' he said, 'and it
struck me as pretty, so I got a copy. It is from an English opera
called "Clari," and seems the only pretty thing in it.'

"'Do you not like it?' Miss Jones asked me; I suppose because I had
not spoken.

"'I think it is lovely,' I said, 'as far as I can judge; but it
carries one away from criticism; I do not think I was thinking of the
music; I was thinking of Home.'

"'Exactly.'

"It was not Miss Jones who said 'Exactly,' but the merchant, who was
standing by her; and he said it, not in that indefinite tone of polite