On Sunday she put on the blue dress and brushed the soil from her shoes, making them neatly black. In the dusk when Susie Whelen and the Donahues were gone she continued to sit in the porch before the house, Tarbell sitting near with his mouth harp. He had given her all the sweets with fringed papers and printed avowals inside and some of the candy she had eaten but some she had tossed carelessly to Susie or Regina. He played tune after tune on the mouth harp, shaking his spittle from it from time to time. His chair was tilted against the railing and he named each piece as he played it, gravely intent upon his rendering. ‘This-here piece is the “Arkansas Traveler”. Did you ever hear that on a French harp?’ His feet were set high on the rung of the chair and his small black moustache kept clear of the musical instrument with difficulty. ‘Did you like that-there piece?’ he asked when he had finished. ‘I recollect once I was on my way to Charlottetown and I met a man said he’d come from Tennessee. I recollect that man as well as if I see him today. I’m a master hand to recollect. He said down in Tennessee he knew a man had been all the way to Floridy and down there you sit under a orange palm same as you might sit under a peach tree here, and you’d reach up your hand and pluck a orange right without you’d bat your eye, he said. Would you like that-there, Honey? Think about that-there and tell me would you like it or not. This piece I recollect I learned from a blind negro down towards Campbellsville. It’s called Sourwood Mountain. Do you like it?’ He set upon the piece with vigour, closing his eyes to turn his vision inward upon the tune. Now and then a buggy would pass, clattering out of the hill road and falling softly away toward the south. ‘Wherever I happen on to be they always like my way with a harp,’ he said. He played a slow dirge that finally frayed out into stiff arpeggios. ‘Wherever I happen on to be they say, “Well, J. B., how’s the music?” But if Miss Ellen Chesser don’t like my music I’d throw this-here harp right over into the middle of Leo Whelen’s weed patch and forget I ever owned it. I’m a plumb fool about you. Before I forget it I better tell you, I’m a plumb fool about you. Tell me now, how do you like this-here song?’