Girls -- Juvenile fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Juvenile fiction
Although Barbara's going made a great gap in the little circle,
everyone was too busy to grieve. School began and with it home work;
there was basket-ball and dancing school and shopping, hats and shoes
to buy. Miss Harris arrived for her annual visit and much time was
spent over samples and patterns. And Peggy and Keineth got their pink
dresses! Then there were old friends to see, new ones to make and
relatives to visit. In this whirl of excitement the Overlook days were
soon forgotten!
With the city life a little of Keineth's shyness had returned. She felt
lost among Peggy's many friends; the hours when Peggy was in school
dragged a little. The simplicity of the Lees' city home had made her
homesick for the big house in Washington Square--for its very
emptiness! So because of this loneliness she spent hours at the piano
eagerly practicing the technic that under Tante had been so tiresome.
Mrs. Lee had engaged one of the best masters in the city and Keineth
went almost daily to his funny little studio. At first she had been a
little afraid of him. He was a Pole, a round-shouldered man with long
gray hair that hung over his collar and queer eyes that seemed to look
through and through one. But after she had heard him play she lost her
shyness, for in his music she heard the voices she loved. He called her
"little one," and told her long stories of Liszt and Chopin and the
other masters. "They are the people that live forever," he would say.
One rainy afternoon after school Peggy went to Keineth's room and found
its door shut. Peggy was cross because a cold had kept her home from
basket-ball, and she deeply resented this closed door.
"I s'pose you're doing something you don't want me to know." Her ear
had caught the quick rustle of paper. In a moment Keineth had opened
the door, but Peggy was turning away with a toss of her head.
"Oh, if you don't want me--"
"Please, Peg," begged Keineth. She pulled her into the room. "I didn't
know you were home, honest!"
Peggy glimpsed the corner of a paper half hidden under some books. Upon
it were written bars of music.
"You _have_ got a secret," she cried excitedly, "you're writing music!
Keineth Randolph, if you don't tell your very best friend, now!"
Keineth, her face scarlet, drew out the tell-tale paper.
"It's just a little thing," she explained shyly. "Your mother showed me
how to write last summer, but I wanted to surprise everybody. I was
going to tell you, though, when it was done. Peg, I'm going to try to
sell it!"
"Sell it! Get real money?" cried Peggy.
"Yes--that's what the masters did--only they were nearly always
starving. 'Course I'm not, but I would like to earn some money." "Oh,
wouldn't it be fun?" Peggy caught Keineth's elbows and whirled her
around. "What would you ever do with it? But where do you sell music?
And what is its name?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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