Marget, staring crossly at neglected plants in the ill-treated patch behind the house, heard both fiddle and voices lilting over the roof. They climbed the slates and swung off the chimney-tops to drop in delicate sweetness on her head. She thought of Kit, of course, in the first breath, but remembered that she had left him nodding in the house. The red-haired baby, she knew, had had him under its eye. She glanced suspiciously down the cottage backs, wondering which harboured this nuisance to the rest. The Martin boy had a fancy for fiddling, she believed; she had caught him talking to Kit about it in the road. Then there was that lass of Simpson’s that thought she played—the one that was going to service before so long. Folks never seemed to care whether the neighbours liked the noise, though they were fit to swear if the red-haired baby cried. There was more than one that she wanted a word with about that, a word flung in like a bomb at a cottage door. This dratted fiddling might give her her excuse, so she picked up her vegetables and hurried down. She thought of Kit again as she flapped along, and again told herself that it was somebody else. He was safe enough under her thumb, by now, the silly old man. He had given her a deal of trouble at first, fiddling in other folks’ houses when he might not fiddle in hers, but of course she had easily traced him by the sound. Then she had stolen upon him unawares, breaking the harmonies like so much silvered glass, and after a time or two he had never done it again. Besides, this playing came from the street, and if she was sure of anything she was sure she had cured him of that. It was much more likely to be some fiddling tramp, who would be knocking for ha’pence at her door. She slipped as she ran down the steps to give him the best of her tongue, and the potatoes flew out of her apron left and right. It took her some minutes to pick them up again, and as she was doing so the music changed. Now it was playing a dismal little tune, and little voices began to sing it in breathless little jerks. On the top of the tune she heard laughter and applause, and then fiddle and voices went on their way alone. Puzzled, she scrambled up with grubby hands, bunched the potatoes in her grimy apron and opened the cottage door.