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Updated: June 24, 2025
Jenny, you will ask your good aunt, Miss Husted, to dine with us en famille one of our old-time dinners. Now, what shall we have?" he said, scanning the well-thumbed menu that Poons had handed to him. "It is an old one," suggested Fico. "It is always the same. It is only the date they change," said Von Barwig. Pinac looked over his shoulder at the menu.
Poons was trying to save enough money to get married, and neither Pinac nor Fico would touch a penny of his earnings, although the boy generously offered them all or any part of his savings to help them tide over until the Spring, when they were reasonably sure of obtaining lucrative engagements. The men had just finished their breakfast and Jenny was washing the dishes for them.
"I shall lay a cloth for the breakfast of Von Barwig when he shall wake up," said Pinac, suiting the action to the word and spreading a red tablecloth on the rickety wooden table. "His work at the Museum keeps him so late he must sleep late." "Sacoroto, the rotten museum he play at, I wish it was dead," growled Fico.
It was roomy and airy in the summer, but draughty and cold in the winter; as it was now warm weather, Von Barwig and his friends did not suffer any inconvenience at this time. The men did not see much of each other in these days. Pinac and Fico had secured engagements on an excursion steamboat that plied its way to Coney Island and back.
"But I asked you!" said Pinac. "He ask you," repeated Fico. "I ask you; we all ask you," asserted Pinac. "In my apartment!" demanded Von Barwig, with some slight show of dignity. "Come, come! The matter is settled. It is good to have old friends at the table. We won't go to the restaurant; it's too noisy there; we shall dine here.
They all knew that something had happened, that something had entered the life of the old professor and changed it, but not one of them attempted to pry into his secret. "Ma foi," said Pinac, "he shall tell himself if he wants to. If not, he shall not!" Fico's reply was characteristic of that Italian's sunny disposition, and it inverted a familiar saying.
"It is a day of rejoicing, so let us rejoice!" said Von Barwig, as he emerged from his little room with a violin bow and some music in his hand. He then took a ring off his finger. "Poons, here! This ring was given me by your father twenty-five years ago. Wear it for my sake! For you, Pinac, my Mendelssohn Concerto. See, here is Mendelssohn's own signature! Fico, here is my Tuart bow.
Pinac did not even know until Von Barwig showed him how to hold his violin properly he used to grab it with his whole hand instead of by his finger and thumb; and as for Fico, he could not read music until Von Barwig taught him, but played the mandolin, guitar and piano by ear.
"His cuckoo clock: nine dollars!" read Fico. "That was the first thing I missed that cuckoo, evenings," sighed Miss Husted. "Mozart, gone!" almost shouted Pinac, pointing to the spot on the wall where that musician's portrait had once reposed. "And Beethoven! And where is Gluck?" Then looking around: "Nom de Dieu! even his metronome have gone his metronome! Dieu, Dieu!"
I'll be worried to death till he comes back," and Miss Husted pressed Skippy more closely to her and went down stairs again; not, however, without first sending Jenny to the floor below, out of the reach of Poons's love-making eyes. "It is true; he has gone out," said Pinac dolefully, as he looked out of the window at the blizzard.
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