This, too, was part of a familiar formula, and Rose found the music. Soon Amzi's cheeks were puffing with the exertion of fluting the "Minuet," while Kirkwood bent to the 'cello. Nan and Phil became an attentive audience on the davenport, as often before. When Amzi dropped out (as he always did), Phil piped in with her whistle, and that, too, was the usual procedure. She whistled a fair imitation of the flute; she had a "good ear"; Rose said her "ear" was too good, and that this explained her impatience of systematic musical instruction. Amzi abused the weather and incidentally the flute; they essayed the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" and the "Traeumerei," with like failure on Amzi's part. Then Rose played, number after number, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, without pause. It was clear that the woman loved her music; that it meant a very great deal to her. Its significance was in the fine lines of her face, beautifully grave, but lighting wonderfully through passages that spoke to her with special meaning. Her profile was toward Kirkwood. He had, indeed, taken a seat that gave him a particular view that he fancied and his eyes wandered from her hands to her lovely, high-bred face. No one spoke between the numbers, or until Rose, sitting quiet a moment at the end, while the last chord died away, found her own particular seat by the white wooden mantel. "I guess those chaps knew their business," observed Amzi. "And I guess you know yours, Rose. I don't know that you ever brought out that nocturne quite so well before. Eh, Tom?" Kirkwood agreed with him. Rose had surpassed herself, in the opinion of the lawyer. Both men found pleasure in paying tribute to her talents. Amzi turned to Nan, who nodded acquiescence. The banker really loved music, and slipped away several times every winter to Chicago, to hear concerts or the opera. On occasions he had taken Kirkwood and Phil and they had made a great lark of it. "What's this rumor about the Sycamore Traction being in trouble?" asked Nan. Amzi rubbed his head. He had not come to the Bartletts' to discuss business, and the topic was not, moreover, one that interested him at the moment. "There are a lot of papers on your desk about that, daddy," Phil remarked. "But I suppose those are office secrets." There was, indeed, a telegram from a New York lawyer asking why Kirkwood had not replied to a certain letter. He glanced at her quickly, apparently disturbed that the matter had been mentioned. Her father's inattention to the letter of the New York lawyer had, independently of Nan Bartlett's reference to the traction company, caused Phil to make certain resolutions touching both her father and herself. "I've got my hand on that, Phil. I've answered." Phil saw that the subject of this correspondence, whose import she had scarcely grasped, was not to be brought into the conversation. She turned away as Amzi addressed her father in a low tone.