"But I sha'n't ask you
that--it's too silly. If I imagined for a moment that you could be
thinking about old Mother Van Horn--"
She paused. Her father cast down his eyes half guiltily.
"Don't say you are, pa. That would be too absurd. You, with all the
important things you have to carry in your head, to waste a minute on
that frowzy old hag! It isn't worth it; it's nonsense."
"I don't know whether it is or not," responded her father, slowly. He
passed a careful hand through the fringe of the chair. "That's what I'd
like to find out."
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" rejoined Jane. "You sha'n't sit poking here in the
dark and thinking of any such thing as that--not another minute. Come in
and hear Dick tell how those students in Paris tied him to the wall and
daubed him all red and green, and what he did to get even. _That's_ worth
while. And you haven't seen Aunt Lyddy yet, have you? So is _that_--isn't
it? Then come along, do."
III
"'When I was a student at Cadiz
I played on the Spanish guitar;
I used to make love to the ladies'--"
This brief snatch of song ended with the obvious and, indeed, inevitable
rhyme for "Cadiz," and the singer completed the stanza by throwing an
arch and rather insinuating glance at the young man who was lounging
negligently on the chair beside her own. She herself leaned back rather
negligently too, with her feet crossed; her elbows were crooked at
varying angles, her fingers pressed imaginary frets or plucked at
imaginary strings, and the spectator was supposed to be viewing an
Andalusian grace and passion abandoned to the soft yet compelling power
of music.
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