“Your teeth,” said Lacroix. “Is there not a surgeon on the island?”

“He will come with me to Glasgow,” said Emily, “when I go to see Mr. Rizzo.”

“How will an eye surgeon assist me?” asked Cornelius.

“He is afraid,” said Jane.

“I am busy,” said Cornelius. “I am très occupé!” He grinned desperately. His teeth looked terrible, even for teeth.

Lacroix turned to Emily. He was trying to follow this. He hoped he was. “You are to see an eye surgeon?”

“I am to be the patient of Mr. Rizzo. At the new hospital in Glasgow.”

“Rizzo was recommended to you?”

“We saw his name in the Review. He had penned an article on the poetic eye. I wrote to him.”

“But he is a surgeon?”

“He is eminent.”

“She hopes he is eminent,” said Jane.

“And are you to go soon?” asked Lacroix.

“I shall go,” said Emily, “while I can still see my way.”

Lacroix nodded. He tried to think of something comforting to say. When nothing came to him he said, “I am half deaf.”

“I know,” she said. “It is why you watch my mouth.”

“Enough of this!” cried Cornelius. “I refuse to be miserable! We shall have music. You be Dionysus, Lovall. My sisters can be two of your maenads. I will be Apollo or some such.”

“What if he does not wish to play?” asked Emily.

Cornelius shrugged. “Then he has carried his fiddle an awfully long way for nothing.”

Instruments were fetched. A lamp was lit, though it was still not entirely needed. The three musicians—Emily, Jane and Lacroix—moved away from the table, Jane to the ottoman, Emily and Lacroix on their chairs at either side of her. Cornelius, alone at the table, made himself a smoke with tobacco, dried hemp and a quartered sheet of writing paper. The hemp he called “bang.” They had managed to grow a tolerable good crop of it in the garden last summer.

Lacroix’s fiddle was held and admired. When he looked for his rosin in the little box inside the case, he found the cartridges he had made on the Jenny. He had forgotten them, and wondered now exactly what he had made them for.

He and Emily tried to tune their instruments to a common pitch. Jane sang notes to help them. After several minutes of turning keys and pegs they declared themselves close enough. Emily played first, something decorative and Italian. Music for a garden, music that might best be accompanied by the scent of jasmine. She played with her eyes closed, her right hand, thumb and forefinger, touching the strings between the brass rose and the bridge. It lasted three or four minutes. When she stopped they applauded her. Fat sparks fell from the end of Cornelius’s smoke. He extinguished them with his fingers. He looked happy.