Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/34

and count my boxes, and keep your eye on my Rosella parrot and three grey cockatoos.’ So he came, quite meekly. You see I know all his people, and he likes to talk about them—particularly about his mother. He thinks all the world of me, but———”

“Oh, that won’t do, that won’t do at all! We must give up Beethoven, he is too big for us.” These words came in sorrowful tones from the music-saloon.

“Well, let us try back to Mozart then. Those little roulades you play on the piano are delightful, and I really do know my Mozart—even you will admit that.”

“Oh yes, you have got the hang of some things very well, very well indeed; but you want work—all you amateurs do. You don’t know what work is. You ought to peg away—I mean practise—clean them up! As our old ’cello used to say, ‘Battle, battle! it’s the only way.’”

“But I haven’t time.”

“You seem to have time for other things.” The speaker’s eye rested for an instant on Lady May’s substantial figure, clothed in the most delicate, dazzling efflorescence of white cambric and embroidery, reposing in a gracefully studied attitude S. by E., and resting her neat bronze toes on the bamboo footstool of her deck-chair.