“Oh, please go on!  I love you, and feel for you.  Tell me all.  Confide in me.  What is it?”

“The weather!”

“Plague take the weather!  I don’t see how you can have the heart to serve me so, Lon.”

“There, there, aunty dear, I’m sorry; I am, on my honor.  I won’t do it again.  Do you forgive me?”

“Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn’t to.  You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time.”

“No, I won’t, honor bright.  But such weather, oh, such weather!  You’ve got to keep your spirits up artificially.  It is snowy, and blowy, and gusty, and bitter cold!  How is the weather with you?”

“Warm and rainy and melancholy.  The mourners go about the streets with their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone.  There’s an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of the streets as far as I can see.  I’ve got a fire for cheerfulness, and the windows open to keep cool.  But it is vain, it is useless:  nothing comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and his heart breaketh.”

Alonzo opened his lips to say, “You ought to print that, and get it framed,” but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one else.  He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry prospect.  The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her head.  Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, “Better the slop, and the sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!”

He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening attitude.  The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear.  He remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing.  There was a blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added charm instead of a defect.  This blemish consisted of a marked flatting of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or chorus of the piece.  When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, and said, “Ah, I never have heard ‘In the Sweet By-and-by’ sung like that before!”

He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded, confidential voice, “Aunty, who is this divine singer?”

“She is the company I was expecting.  Stays with me a month or two.  I will introduce you.  Miss—­”