“Oh,” said her mother in a matter-of-fact tone. “He hasn’t got it any longer. He sold it once when Granny was ill and they were a bit short of money. It was a good fiddle and he got five pounds for it.”

She spoke as though there was no more in selling your fiddle than in selling half a pig or a spare sack of potatoes in an emergency; but Laura, though so much younger, felt differently about it. Though devoid of the most rudimentary musical instinct herself, she had imagination enough to know that to a musician his musical instrument must be a most precious possession. So, when she was alone with her grandfather one day, she said, “Didn’t you miss your fiddle, Granda?”

The old man gave her a quick, searching look, then smiled sadly. “I did, my maid, more than anything I’ve ever had to part with, and that’s not a little, and I miss it still and always shall. But it went for a good cause, and we can’t have everything we want in this world. It wouldn’t be good for us.” But Laura did not agree. She thought it would have been good for him to have his dear old fiddle. That wretched money, or rather the lack of it, seemed the cause of everybody’s troubles.

The fiddle was not the only thing he had had to give up. He had given up smoking when he retired and they had to live on their tiny savings and the small allowance from a brother who had prospered as a coal-merchant. Perhaps what he felt most keenly of all was that he had had to give up giving, for he loved to give.