"I have come, dear," he observes, slowly, "to know how soon you will be
ready for me to give you your next music-lesson?"
"I prefer that you would not call me your 'dear,'" was the chilling
answer.
The organist thinks for a moment, and then nods his head intelligently.
"You are right," he says, gravely, "--there _might_ be somebody
listening who could not enter into our real feelings. And now, how about
those music-lessons?"
"I don't want any more, thank you," says FLORA, coldly. "While we are
all in mourning for our poor, dear absurd EDDY, it seems like a
perfectly ridiculous mockery to be practicing the scales."
Fanning himself with his straw hat, Mr. BUMSTEAD shakes his bushy head
several times. "You do not discriminate sufficiently," he replies.
"There are kinds of music which, when performed rapidly upon the violin,
fife, or kettle-drum, certainly fill the mind with sentiments
unfavorable to the deeper anguish of human sorrow. Of such, however, is
not the kind made by young girls, which is at all times a help to the
intensity of judicious grief. Let me assure you, with the candor of an
idolized friend, that some of the saddest hours of my life have been
spent in teaching you to try to sing a humorous aria from DONIZETTI; and
the moments in which I have most sincerely regretted ever having been
born were those in which you have played, in my hearing, the
Drinking-song from _La Traviata_. Believe me, then, my devoted pupil,
there can be nothing at all inconsistent with a prevalence of profound
melancholy in your continued piano-playing; whereas, on the contrary,
your sudden and permanent cessation might at least surprise your friends
and the neighborhood into a light-heartedness temporarily oblivious of
the memory of that dear, missing boy, to whom you could not, I hear,
give the love already bestowed upon me.
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