I began to eat. “Go ahead,” I said, in a tone that I must confess was muffled. “In the first place--you, ah, you were right about Viola.” (I almost fainted, but I bit into a biscuit and held on to consciousness) “I see it now. Then--this afternoon I am going out to buy a wedding present for Beata, and I want you to go with me; can you?” “If you’ll wait till I get through practising--” I answered. “Certainly, that’s understood. _Have_ to with you--” (She always resented and never understood why my first thought _had_ to be music) “And another thing,” she went on, and she fumbled in the front of her negligee to find a cablegram, “I’ve heard from him--” I took it and read it. “He must have cared a lot to write those two pleases in a cablegram,” I said. She nodded and tried not to smile, but the inclination was so much stronger than her ability to hold it in check, that she smiled in a silly, ashamed sort of way, and she avoided meeting my eyes. Ben Forbes had cabled, “Thank you. Letter follows. Please please write me again.” “I thought I’d get Beata a silver coffee service,” said Leslie, who can’t seem to accommodate to other people’s circumstances. “She’d never use that,” I said. “You might as well get her a wooden leg or a pair of stilts! I’d get her some horrible picture, or candlesticks for their front room, or a lamp with a funny, warty, red and green shade--” “You’re right,” she said, and then she went off. She kissed her fingers to me from the doorway, and again she smiled in that misty, vacant way. I practised hard, for that afternoon I had a lesson, and it was that afternoon that Signor Paggi began to be most kind to me. “You have more _feel_ in the tune,” he said. (I was very happy) “I think Cu_peed_ have come to make you _see_--” he went on. “Not to me,” I said, “but to some one I like--” “Have as you will,” he stated, “but play again, for me--” And I did. And as I did, I thought of how Sam had looked when he heard me practise that very same music at the Pension Dante. He had said it was beautiful, and it had helped me. Friendship is a wonderful thing! CHAPTER TWENTY A COUNTRY WEDDING AND THE COMING OF SPRING A great deal happened in that slice of time which carried us from January into spring, although during that interval we felt as if we were going along almost entirely on the level. You never really do see the things that happen--not well--until you can look at them over your shoulder. I realize now that there was lots of excitement, and that there was really a good deal of abrupt change, but I didn’t see it then. In the first place, we all went to Beata’s wedding in February, and I never did have a better time.