"Well," said the landlady, exculpatingly, "we are all poor folks here, ma'am. He mostly pays his rent--I don't ask much, but when he's behind I'm not hard on him. He's a good lad," she went on, and as she was a sizable woman, after a gesture of deferential apology she took a seat, to support her in her view of lingering to angle with information until she caught a little enlightenment. "A good lad, but that proud! He thinks he'll be as rich as a dook some day, with his little fiddle!" She shook her head in compassion and chuckled fatly over a household joke of long standing. "He's all right in his head, ma'am, except on that point. A poor lad that plays in the streets is none so likely to pick up a fortune. And such tunes as he plays! I've always been told I'd an uncommon ear for a catch, but to catch head or tail of them is beyond me!" "He plays in the streets!" "Yes, poor Dook--come rain, come shine. Sometimes he has a good day, sometimes a bad one; but times is hard--it's not very good at best. He's not one of them pretty-impudent Italian boys with wheedling brown velvet eyes. He looks too scornful, and despises folks more than is for his own good. I have felt hurt at it myself, ma'am, and I may say I'm not touchy. When I've known that he was a bit hard up and he looked hollow, and I've asked him in neighborly to have a bite with us, he has answered me almost as if he hated me for it--and gone hollow." His mother drew in her breath sharply. "Might you be a friend of his?" asked the landlady. "Once when he was sick abed, and I came up to say a good word, he got sociabler than usual, and spoke of a lady, a lady of quality, who'd heard him play--I thought likely it was before he came here with his coat so seedy--a lady who thought he was very fine. Perhaps I don't understand about fiddle-playing, and he is all he says. Might you be the lady?" "Yes, yes, yes!" said Emmie, scarcely knowing what she said. The landlady looked much interested. "Well, now, I thought as much, for I don't think he's any one in the world belonging to him. He's a good lad, ma'am," she said again, with a good-natured impulse to make hay for a fellow-creature while this, possibly a sun, was shining. "He deserves better than he gets, if I do say it. He works at them music-books for hours sometimes, at night, till the man below is fit to go mad. But I tell him I can't put out a lodger that pays more frequent than he, and when I speak to Drastus he says he'll leave, though he should have to sleep on the pavement--he must play when he pleases. He says that it's because he can't play as other fiddle-men do, from a book and in a particular way, that he can't get nothing to do but play in the streets. So he must learn, and learn he will, and he scrapes away like a meeting of cats on the roof. I'm sorry he's out, ma'am. What did you want with him, now? Couldn't I give your message--or must you wait yourself?" "I will wait--I will wait."