Music Hath Charms

For the next two days it rained incessantly, and Margot sat in the
little parlour of the inn talking to Mrs Macalister, or rather
listening while Mrs Macalister talked, and playing draughts with Mr
Macalister, who had relapsed into hopeless gloom of mind, and was with
difficulty prevented from rushing home by the first train.

"The doctor said we were to keep him from the office for a good month at
least, and there's not three weeks of the time gone by. If he goes back
now, what will be the use of spending all this money on travelling and
keep, and what not? It will be all clean waste," sighed the poor dame
sadly. "He's a bit fratchety and irritable, I'm free to admit, but you
should not judge a man when his nerves are upset. There's not a better
man on earth than Mr Macalister when he has his health. It's dull for
a man-body to be shut up in an inn, without the comforts of home, and
feeling all the time that there's money going out. It is different when
he can be out and about with his fishing and what not.--If you could
just manage to amuse him a bit, like a good lassie!..."

The good lassie nodded reassuringly into the troubled, kindly face.

"I'll do my best. I have an old father of my own, who has nerves too,
and I am used to amusing him. I'll take Mr Macalister in hand till the
weather clears."

It was not a congenial task, for, truth to tell, Mr Macalister was not
a beguiling object, with his lugubrious face, lack-lustre eyes, and
sandy, outstanding whiskers; nor did he in the first instance betray any
gratitude for the attention bestowed upon him. A stolid glance over his
spectacles was his first response to Margot's overtures; his next, a
series of grunts and sniffs, and when at last he condescended to words
it was invariably to deride or throw doubt on her statements.