"Do you suppose I could play for him there? Do you suppose he will ever take me as a pupil?" "Certainly he will! I haven't spent all these years teaching you to have you refused by anybody." "Suppose I did go, what should I prepare to play?" The unhappy look was gone from Richard's face. Thomasina had the gift of wings, no less than Basil Everman. Moreover, she lifted others out of fog-dimmed valleys up to mountain peaks. Richard's eyes shone, his cheeks glowed, ambition and aspiration now quickened by a new motive, took up their abode once more in his breast. On his way home Mrs. Scott called to him from her porch. Impatiently he obeyed the summons. He did not like her, and had never disliked her so much as he did at this moment. She had many foolish questions to ask. What did he think of her friend Mr. Utterly? What did he suppose was Mr. Utterly's business with Eleanor Bent? She understood that he had spent an evening with her. The Bents were strange people, they behaved well, yet everything that one knew definitely about Mrs. Bent was that she was a hotel-keeper's daughter. Richard said shortly in reply that he had had no conversation with Mr. Utterly and that he knew none of his business. "And I do think it is the most pathetic thing about your Uncle Basil," said Mrs. Scott. "My Uncle Basil," repeated Richard. "What of him?" Mrs. Scott's hands clasped one another in a gesture of amazement. "Why Mr. Utterly said--why where were you?--oh, yes, you were in the kitchen so kindly helping Cora!--he said your uncle wrote wonderfully. I think it's very strange--" Richard was suddenly certain that his neighbor wished to "get something out of him." "Oh, that!" said he, without having any idea what she meant. Mrs. Scott made him promise to come the next afternoon to play with Cora. He could not escape. He almost added poor, inoffensive Cora to her mother and the metallic piano in the limbo to which he consigned them. Now his wings drooped. He decided that after supper he would lie down for a few minutes to get rid of the sharp pain which too much practicing had put into the back of his neck. Then he would join his father and mother on the porch and settle the important business of his future. At the supper table he asked about his Uncle Basil and his mother answered placidly, prepared for the question. "He had published anonymously some stories and this Mr. Utterly came to ask questions about his life." "Why wasn't I told?" "You haven't been here very much of late, my dear." "Where are the stories?" "Mr. Utterly has them." "Couldn't we get them?" "Perhaps we could." "How did Mrs. Scott know about him?" "Mr. Utterly went there to inquire." "Did you know they had been published?" "No. You had better stay with us this evening. We scarcely know our boy."