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"He learns a lot here by lookin' on, an' she tells him the rest at Mosman in the pale moonlight. If I won a sweep, I'd take a few lessons meself an' cut him out." He became aware that Miss Giltinan was standing behind him, and raised his voice.
Overhead the sky, arched in a cloudless dome of blue, was reflected in the turquoise depths of the water. Then Mosman came in sight with its shaggy slopes and terra-cotta roofs, the houses, on the pattern of a Swiss chalet, standing with spaces between, fashionable and reserved. Jonah thought of Cardigan Street, and smiled.
He had joined the army of mendicant musicians, who scrape a tune in front of hotels and shops, living on charity thinly veiled. They had passed him one night on their return from Mosman, playing in front of a public-house to an audience of three loafers. The streets had soon dragged him to their level.
A month later Jonah held a receipt for twelve pounds ten, signed by Hans Paasch, the first instalment of an annuity of fifty pounds a year miraculously left him by a distant cousin in Germany. He showed this to Clara while they were crossing in the boat to Mosman. She listened to him in silence. Then a flush coloured her cheeks.
The shopman slinked away without a word. Miss Giltinan was annoyed. It was not the first time that she had heard these scandalous rumours, for the shop was alive with whispers, some professing to know every detail of the meetings between Jonah and the music-teacher, naming to a minute the boat they caught on their return from Mosman.
"I want yer to 'elp me. Since 'er mother died, she's gone from bad to worse. I've got no one to 'elp me, an' I feel I'll burst if I don't talk it over with somebody." "I hardly know," replied Clara, taken by surprise. "Say the Mosman boat at half past two, an' I'll be there," said Jonah brusquely. "Very well," said Clara.
Jonah, who had been standing outside the Mosman ferry for the last half-hour, looked at the clock in the Customs House opposite, and swore to himself. It was on the stroke of three, and she would miss the boat, as usual.
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