The dance ended, Cherry turned around on the piano stool and said,
There was a sound of steps on the porch and the shadow of a man fell across the square hallway. There was also a subdued rap on the door post.
I stepped to the door and found a tramp standing there. He was the typical tramp of the comic papers; unshaven, dusty, blear-eyed, unkempt, stoop shouldered, ragged, un-prepossessing.
“What do you wish?” said I, irritated at the interruption.
“I’d like a glass of milk,” said he, huskily.
“Well, go around to the back door and the girl will give you one. Don’t you want some meat?”
“Thanks; I don’t care if I do,” said he, wiping his mouth as if my invitation had been a bibulous one.
He went around, and I returned to the sitting room, where Cherry had started another piece.
“Do you have many tramps?” asked she when she had finished.
“Not many. They are too lazy to climb the hills. I think he is only the third one this summer. He was awful looking. Did you see him?”
“What a life! Probably not a wish in the world but for food and drink.”
My moralizing was cut short by the return of the tramp. In his right hand he held a sandwich and with his left he was wiping milk from his moustache.
As he passed the window he beckoned to me, who was sitting by it.
I supposed that he wanted money, and went out.
“Say, boss,” said he, “I’m pretty far gone, but you didn’t set the dog on me, and I want you to ask that young lady in there a favour.”
“Ask her to play the ‘Dance of the Dwarfs’ in the same suite—‘Peer Gint.’”
“Sit down,” said I, and felt as if I needed a seat myself.
The oafish tramp sat down on the porch seat, and I went in and told Cherry what the tramp would like to hear.
Surprise showed in her face, but quite as a matter of course she went to the piano and began the lumbering, humourous dance.
In the middle of it I could hear the tramp laughing gutturally, and when she had finished it he clapped his hands and said,
“Beg pardon, but I’m much obliged. That’s one of the funniest pieces of music that was ever composed. Say, boss, will you step out a minute.”
I stepped out. He had risen and was evidently going.
“Boss, I used to be one of the second violins in Seidl’s orchestra, but—well,—that’s how. I was go’n’ _by_ here, for I had had som’n’ to eat at the last house, but when I heard ‘Anitra’s Dance,’ gee! it brought back the good old days when I was doing the only thing I ever cared for, fiddling; and I thought I’d ask for some more, and then I didn’t dare until I’d been around to the kitchen and braced up. Thank the young lady for me.”