Chapter 6 THE MUSICALE

DINNER was served at the family table, with Mr. West at the head and his mother at the foot.

"The eye is the window of the soul," thought Percy, as he met the glance of Adelaide sitting opposite. Certain he was that he had never before looked into such alluring eyes.

Adelaide was neither a girl nor a woman and yet at times she was both. With the other children she was a child that still loved to romp and play with the rest, free as a bird. Her mother, a sweet-faced woman, some years her husband's junior, made sisters of all her daughters, the more naturally perhaps, because the grandmother was still so active and so interested in all phases of homemaking that she seemed mother to them all. Adelaide's two older sisters were married and her brother Charles, also older than herself, by three years, was a senior in college. Adelaide had just finished her course in the Academy where the long service of a maiden aunt as a teacher had secured certain appreciated privileges, without which it is doubtful if both Charles and Adelaide could have been sent away to school at the same time. A boy of fourteen and the eight-year old baby brother with two sisters between comprised the younger members of the family.

Miss Bowman, the teacher of the district school, also occupied a place at the table. The evening meal was disposed of without delay, for there was something of greater importance to follow. A musicale in the near-by country church had been in preparation and Percy heartily accepted an invitation to accompany the family to the evening's entertainment. Or rather he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. West and the grandmother, for all the children had walked the distance before the carriage arrived.

Without having specialized in music, nevertheless Percy had improved the frequent opportunities he had had, especially while at the university, and he had learned to appreciate quality in the musical world. Consequently he was not a little surprised and greatly pleased to sit and listen to a class of music that he had never before heard rendered in country places; but, as he listened for Adelaide's singing in chorus, duet, and solo, he found himself wondering whether the eye or the voice more clearly revealed the soul.

"It seemed like the old times," said the grandmother, with something like a sigh, as she took her place in the carriage. "If our land was only like it used to be! but it's become so mighty poor our children can't have many advantages these days. The Harcourt's and Staunton's whom you met are descendants of ancestors once well known in this state."

"It seems to me that the land need not have grown poor," said Percy. "If the land was once productive, its fertility ought to be maintained by the return of the essential materials removed in crops or destroyed by cultivation. Surely land need not become poor; but of course I know too little about this land to suggest at the present time what method could best be adopted for its improvement."

"We can tell you what the best method is," she quickly replied. "Just put on plenty of ordinary farm fertilizer, but, laws, we don't have enough to cover fifty acres a year."

For a time each seemed lost in thought, or listening to the husband and wife who sat in the front seat quietly talking of the evening's performances. Percy recognized some of the names they mentioned as belonging to persons to whom he had been presented at the church. It gradually dawned upon him that he had spent the evening with the aristocracy of the Blue Mound neighborhood. Culture, refinement, and poverty were the chief characteristics of the people who had been assembled.

"It need not have been," he repeated to himself; "surely, it need not have been, "and then he wondered if these were not much sadder words than the oft repeated "it might have been."

"May I ask where your people came from, Mrs. West?" he questioned.

"Where we came from?" she repeated, "I don't quite understand."

"Excuse me," said Percy, "but in the West it is so common to ask people where they are from. You know the West is settled with people from all sections of the East, and many from Europe and from Canada, and I thought your ancestors may have moved here from some other state, as from Pennsylvania for example, where my mother's people once lived."

"Let me advise you, Young Man," said the grandmother briskly, and in a tone that reminded Percy of the twinkle he had at times noticed in her eyes when she seemed young again-"Let me advise you never to ask a Virginian if he was born in Pennsylvania. That's more than most Virginians can stand. Once a Virginian, always a Virginian,-both now, hereafter, and hitherto. It's mighty hard to find a Virginian who came from anywhere except from the royal blood of England; although some may condescend to acknowledge kinship to the Scottish royalty."

The grandmother's voice was raised to a pitch which commanded the attention of the other members in the carriage and a hearty laugh followed her jovial wit, to the full relief of Percy's temporary embarrassment.

"Well," she continued, "to answer your question: my husband and my children are direct descendants of Colonel Charles West, a brother of Lord Delaware, who was Sir Thomas West, whose ancestry goes back to Henry the Second, of England, and to David the First, of Scotland; and my granddaughter is the great-granddaughter of Patrick Henry. So now you know where _we _came from," and she laughed again like a girl. "Yes," she added, "we have a family tree six feet from branch to branch, but it is stored in a back room where I am sure it is covered with cobwebs, for we have no time to live with the past when the summer boarders are here."

As the carriage stopped at the side gate, the children's voices could be heard in the rear; for Mr. West had been living over again his younger days with his sweet-faced wife, and the farm team had taken its own time.