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So he stood somewhat awkwardly by the table, while Fuller re-entered the house and, after a little pause, returned with a pile of music. "This here's one of Ezra's books, I reckon," said the elder, singling one volume from the pile. "It's the one you browt here the day he gi'en you his libery." "Ah!" said Reuben, "Manzini? That was the last music he opened for his own playing, so he told me."
She fancied him in the act of reading her letter, and she kissed his as she did so. Did he kiss hers? Was he as glad as she was? At these audacious fancies she hid herself and blushed. Reuben all this while, and until a much later hour, was bewildering himself about the curious and old-fashioned missive he had discovered between the melodious pages of Manzini.
"It was in Manzini, the book you took Reuben's letter from. He found it there, and thought it came from me, until he saw that the paper was old, and that it did not quite answer his own letter. He took it to his uncle Ezra, and the poor old man's heart is broken. Oh, aunt, his heart is broken! He had never seen it. He had waited, waited "
So in such a state of tremulous-ness as she had never experienced before even when she took Reuben's note from the pages of Manzini or hid her own there she arose, and, protesting that her father would never breakfast in her absence, and that she should be roundly scolded for being so late, she put on her hat and gloves, kissed Aunt Rachel's cold cheek, and ran out into the lane with blushes so charming and becoming that she might have been taken for the very humanized spirit of the dawn, lingering an hour or two beyond her time to make acquaintance with daylight.
Manzini mentions a man who fell from the dome of the Invalides in Paris, without sustaining any serious accident, and there is a record from Madrid of a much higher fall than this without serious consequence. In 1792 a bricklayer fell from the fourth story of a high house in Paris, landing with his feet on the dirt and his body on stone.
"Look in the Manzini," Reuben had said, and the girl, almost without knowing it, had paused with her hands resting on the glazed brown mill-board which bound it. He would think, if she opened the book at once, that she was curiously eager to obey him, and her heart told her pretty truly what she would find when she looked there.
Isaiah's grim reticence was less of a trouble to him than it would have been under ordinary circumstances, for he had his own thoughts to think, and did not care to be drawn away from them. At the lich-gate Aunt Rachel paused to shake hands with everybody but Ruth and Reuben. "You had better take Manzini home to-night, Reuben," said Ruth.
"Worth the carrying?" said Reuben, with a half-embarrassed little laugh. "I'm pretty sure you had no rubbish on your shelves, uncle." He began to turn over the leaves of the topmost book. "'Études?" he read, "'pour deux violins, par Joseph Manzini. This looks good. Who was Joseph Manzini? I never heard of him." "Manzini?" asked the old man, with a curious eagerness "Manzini."
"It will take a hand-cart to carry the books," he said; "but I will take Manzini now if you will let me." The old man, contenting himself with a mere nod in answer, he took up the old-fashioned oblong folio, tucked it under his arm, and shook hands with the donor. "This is a princely gift, uncle," he said, with the natural exaggeration of a grateful youngster.
"Had you read that letter as you brought to me this morning, lad?" he asked, coughing behind his hand, and trying to speak as if the thing were a commonplace trifle. "I read it because I thought that it must be addressed to me," said Reuben. "I had written to Ruth, and she told me to look in Manzini for her answer. I found nothing but that letter in the book."
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