She was a
pretty girl, with fluffy honey-coloured hair and about thirty white
frocks. And she seemed to be quite as silly as her staid stepmother and
her prim step-aunt had said. She transformed the careful order of the
house into a wild disorder, and left a novel or so lying on the
drawing-room table between her stepmother's _Contemporary Review_ and
her step-aunt's _History of European Morals_. Her taste in music was
candidly and brazenly bad. It was a fact, as her elders had stated, that
she played nothing but waltzes. What was worse, she compelled Carl
Ullman to perform waltzes. And one day she burst into the drawing-room
when Carl was alone there, with a roll under her luscious arm, and said:
"What do you think I've found at Barrowfoot's?"
"I don't know," said Carl, gloomily smiling, and then smiling without
gloom.
"Waldteufel's waltzes arranged for four hands. You must play them with
me at once."
And he did. It was a sad spectacle to see the organist of St Placid's
galloping through a series of dances with the empty-headed Edith.
The worst was, he liked it. He knew that he ought to prefer the high
intellectual plane, the severe artistic tastes, of the elderly sisters.
Pages:
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273