“Good-day!” retorted Caleb without raising his eyes from the papers he was sorting. “Mr. Conover!” coughed Standish in despair, “I’ll--I’ll be very glad if you’ll dine with us on Friday night.” Conover opened the drawer, tossed the check across the table and went on with his work. “I’ll be there,” he grunted. CHAPTER IX A LESSON IN IGNORANCE Desirée was at the piano. Caleb Conover, whose knowledge of music embraced one Sousa march and “Summer Noon” (with a somewhat hazy idea as to which was which) lounged, sprawling, on a cushion by her feet; listening in ignorant admiration to the snatches of melody. That anyone could coax a tune out of so complex an instrument was to him a mystery to be greeted with silent respect. He had come to her, in the long Spring twilight, to show with naive pride an invitation he had just received. An invitation to the musicale-dinner at the Standishes’, three nights hence. He volunteered no information as to how it had been obtained; but evaded the girl’s wondering queries with the guilty embarrassment that was always his when she chanced to corner him in a fault. From Conover’s manner Desirée gathered that the invitation was in a way an effort on Standish’s part to repay the courtesy of the various large loans she knew Caleb had made to the banker. Nor would she spoil the Fighter’s very evident delight by closer cross-questioning. Caleb had said, days ago, that he was going to be invited to the dinner. And, despite her invariable scoffs at his boasts, she had long since learned that such vaunts had an odd way of coming true. The June dusk lay velvet-like over the little music room. From the yard outside came the bitter-sweet breath of syringas. Far off sounded the yells of Billy Shevlin and some of his fellow street-boys; their racket mellowed by distance. Talk had languished. At last Desirée had crossed to the piano. She sat, playing scraps of music, as was her wont; pausing now and then to speak; then letting her fingers run into a new air or a series of soft improvised chords. She had scant technique and played almost wholly by ear; using the piano only as the amateur music-worshipper’s medium for recalling and reproducing some cherished fragments of song. But to Caleb, lolling at her side, the performance was sublime. That anyone could talk while playing the piano was to him nothing short of marvelous. He was firmly convinced it was a gift vouchsafed to Desirée alone. Music itself was wholly unintelligible to him. Except from Desirée’s lips or fingers, he found it actively distasteful. But all she did was perfect. And if her playing fell upon his ear as a meaningless jumble of sounds, he at least found the sounds sweet. “What’s that thing you just did with one hand and then rumbled down on the low notes with the other?” he asked, after a spell of watching the busy white fingers shining through the dusk.