United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This smiling and unpressed individual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the "Herald" and equally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whom he had taken it even Scatchy could not have called him a vulture or threatened him with the police. He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not to interfere with her outlook over the room. "Warmer?" he asked.
And there are no accidents?" "None. Now sleep, or the slipper." So far Harmony's small world in the old city had consisted of Scatchy and the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off in the firmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had gone, weeping anxious postcards from every way station it is true, but nevertheless gone.
Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with the master. Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then a grain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had been right she had the real thing.
Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin young mind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need? She's going to be alone and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is not like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach, and I'm thankful for it.
It was when having picked up her violin in a very passion of loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar sounds echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms it was when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the gifted:
Many of the young women whom she met at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom; the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peter had admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit.
From Jimmy's room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices. "You have been awfully good to me," McLean said as he finally rose to go. "I I want you to know that I'll never forget this evening, never." "It has been splendid, hasn't it? Since little Scatchy left there has been no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for some one to talk music to." Lonely! Poor Peter!
And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasional times when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of a dancing-hall or one of the little theaters that opened after the opera.
She knew the garden quite well. Even the darkness had no horror for her. Little Scatchy had had a habit of leaving various articles on her window-sill and of instigating searches for them at untimely hours of night. Once they had found her hairbrush in the rabbit hutch! So Harmony, ashamed but unalarmed, made her way by the big spruce to the corner of the old lodge and thus to the courtyard.
But I didn't, and I'm back at the church again and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay until the master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling. "Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair.
Word Of The Day