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Presently he came to a halt near her and began softly to whistle the little-bear dance from the "Rag-Time Follies." She smiled before she knew it, and the next instant he was perched on the corner of her desk, demanding rapturously to know what she was doing there, and swearing that he had recognized her the moment he entered the room. "Let go my hand, Mr. Mac!" she implored in laughing confusion.
I was struck by the entire absence of books of travel and scientific works. I spent part of the afternoon in the drawing-room playing a large instrument of the gramophone type. There were several hundred records from grand opera, violin solos by Kreisler, and the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, to rag-time and the latest comic songs.
Until then he had not known that her window saw so far; though it was not strange that he could see her light, since he was on the crest of a ridge higher than any other until one reached the bluff that held Sunlight Basin like a pocket within its folds. Luis finished the song, strummed a while, sang a popular rag-time, strummed again and, so Starr explained his silence, went to bed.
Yes, I know that the boys sing the rag-time, but this must not be the only side of the picture. They sing the old hymns, too, and memories of nights "down the line," when I have heard them in small groups and in great crowds singing the old, old hymns of the church, have burned their silhouettes into my memory never to die.
But, as already stated, the Doctor was in a remarkably gracious mood. When informed by the steward, in fear and trembling, of the man's unexpected take-off, his lips did not so much as form one syllable of censure; nay, they were so pursed that snatches of rag-time floated softly from them, to be broken only by a pleasant query after the health of the other's eldest-born.
But there is other music sometimes neither inspiring nor beautiful when heard in a German rathskeller the music of rag time. If there is anything funnier than a German orchestra trying to play rag-time music we have never heard it. It is unconscious humor on part of the orchestra, consequently is all the more excruciating.
In Bobbie's ears the jangling tambourine, the weird splutterings of the banjos, the twanging of the guitars, the shrill music of the violins and clarionet, the monotonous rag-time pom-pom of the piano accompanist, the clash and bang of cymbal and base-drum, the coarse minor cadences of the negro singers all so essential to cabaret dancing of this class sounded like the war pibroch of a Satanic clan of reincarnate fiends.
The Boche was a mile away at least; and when you were weary of staring through binoculars, trying to spot enemy movement, you could sit and lounge, and hum the rag-time "Wait and See the Ducks go by," with a new and very thorough meaning. The signal officer was away doing a course, and I took on his duties: plenty of long walks and a good deal of labelling to do, but the task was not onerous.
"Tryin' to play 'Rag-Time Temple Bells, are you?" "Then I did register a tinkle, did I?" says I. "Tinkle! More like a riot call," says she. "Want to look at rooms?" "Not exactly," says I. "You see, I'm representin' " "Are you?" she crashes in crisp. "Well, say, you fresh agents are goin' to overwork this comedy cut-up act with our bell one of these times. Go on. Shoot it.
I wish I was close enough to the gang to have you pound me on the back, and to kick that big brute of a Mackilvane for trying to stuff me under the bed. I'd like to hear some of Gregg's rag-time, and see Mealy Jones try to ride the bay horse. "But this is the end of my paper, and I've got to go back to the hospital. To-morrow I am to be put on regular duty.
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