His cousin, the Chief-justice, made a signal with his hat, and one by
one the sitters stole out into the square noiselessly, and went their
ways, leaving the young man playing on, with the negro child at his
knee, leaning there as if to spy out the living voice in his violin.
Other children came to the door--white children from the square, black
children from the garden--and some ventured a little way in to hear the
tender wooing of the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechanically,
but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sister, Grief, was waiting
on the chords. At last a bolder child than the rest came and pushed his
elbow and said,
"Papa!"
"My boy, my dear boy!" the fiddler cried, as tears streamed down his
cheeks, and he lifted the lad to his heart and kissed him.
Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitary
canker at the Senator's heart--his wife's dead form in the old
Presbyterian kirk-yard.
It was soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and other silent things,
that a light-hearted, affectionate, strong, yet womanly, engine of
energy constituted the young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning,
impulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the birds, he
combined facility and earnestness in almost mercurial relations to each
other, and the Judge saw that these must constitute a remarkable jury
lawyer.
His face was shaven smooth; his throat and chin showed an early tendency
to flesh; the poise of his head and thoughtful darting of his eyes and
slight aqualinity of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and
competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy body that had to
be watched lest it relapse into indolence.
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