Next morning,
however, the photograph had found its way back again, a little dusty
and with a bit of the gilding chipped off from one corner of the
frame, but there sure enough it was. I suppose they put it back when
they found how rich he had become.
In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed Elijah
over the fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences did not this picture
bring back! Looking out of the window, there were the flower beds in
the front garden exactly as they had been, and Ernest found himself
looking hard against the blue door at the bottom of the garden to
see if there was rain falling, as he had been used to look when he was
a child doing lessons with his father.
After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and their father were
left alone, Theobald rose and stood in the middle of the hearthrug
under the Elijah picture, and began to whistle in his old absent
way. He had two tunes only -one was "In my Cottage near a Wood," and
the other was the Easter Hymn; he had been trying to whistle them
all his life, but had never succeeded; he whistled them as a clever
bullfinch might whistle them- he had got them, but he had not got them
right; he would be a semitone out in every third note as though
reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had known none but
the Lydian or the Phrygian mode, or whatever would enable him to go
most wrong while still keeping the tune near enough to be
recognised.
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